I’ve come to a point where I largely don’t care about Star Wars. I should, since it looms large for me as a movie geek. Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw.* I thrilled to The Empire Strikes Back. I thought Return of the Jedi was…pretty good. For a while, that was it, and the Star Wars franchise was the crown jewel of franchises.

In 1999, things changed. I stood in line to see The Phantom Menace** with a bunch of other mutants. The buzz in line was real. The excitement was real. Everything was gravy until the part where the actual movie started. As you may or may not know, The Phantom Menace is somewhat of a mixed bag. After that was Attack of the Clones, which sucked. After that was Revenge of the Sith, which works more often than it doesn’t.

Then, in 2012, George Lucas sold his franchise to Disney, and the floodgates opened. A Star Wars sequel trilogy was released. The Force Awakens was not bad. The Last Jedi was divisive, yet gutsy. The Rise of Skywalker, though, nearly broke me. There were also eight live-action series and six animated series dropped on Disney Plus, and only a handful of them were worth a damn. One of them is Andor, which for my money is one of the greatest shows meade in the history of television.  

The other standout series was The Mandalorian, a space-Western that, for a while, anyway, was free from the franchise’s oppressive canon. It was Lone Wolf and Cub, but with Star Destroyers, and people loved it. But as Dostoyevsky said, “To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.” Could Dostoyevsky have been referring to The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first theatrical Star Wars release in seven years? Definitely not, but isn’t it fun to imagine he did? 

 Years have passed following the death of Darth Vader and the destruction of the Galactic Empire. Imperial commanders have retreated to their personal fiefdoms, and the New Republic hunts them down one by one. One of them is about to have a very bad day, as the New Republic has hired the titular Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal/Brendan Wayne/Lateef Crowder) and Grogu (A puppet) to bring him in.

True to form, Mando goes full Han Wick and slaughters his way through stormtroopers, AT-ATs, and the particularly luckless commander. As he often does, Mando manages all this while simultaneously keeping an eye on the cute-as-a-button Grogu. Their mission having been accomplished, they return to Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), their liaison with the New Republic.

Ward is mildly annoyed that Mando opted to vaporize their target, but she gets over it awfully fast. She assigns him another, more convoluted job. It is to find the mysterious Imperial warlord Coin (Jonny Coyne), only nobody knows what Coin looks like. Scratch that, the Hutt Twins know Coin. They’re kin to the unalive crime boss Jabba, and they’re willing to provide intel to the New Republic. For a price, of course.

The Hutt Twins want Mando and Grogu to free Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), the son of Jabba, and bring him home. Rotta is held by a shadowy criminal organization, and he fights as a gladiator. Imagine a garden slug, but yoked, and you have a pretty good idea as to Rotta’s deal. So off our heroes go into an adventure that in no way feels like the fourth season of The Mandalorian streaming series squashed into the shape of a movie.

Look, I know that plot recap above comes off a little bit snide. I’m in my feelings, because as I sat in the theater watching The Mandalorian and Grogu, I was struck by how spectacularly half-assed it all was. Is it due to incompetent filmmaking? No, because director Jon Favreau knows a thing or two about making zippy blockbusters. Here, there are some fun moments, particularly the opening sequence of Mando and Grogu storming a remote mountain base. After that, the film’s energy wanes, and I think tightening up the editing would have solved that particular issue. 

The screenplay by Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Noah Kloor is where most of the film’s problems dwell. The first big issue is that there are virtually no character arcs. When Mando shows up in the initial five minutes, he’s the same guy at the closing credits, and the same goes for Grogu. I get that this is meant to be similar to a James Bond movie, where Mando simply has an adventure. Yet if that’s the case, there should be supporting characters around him who change, and nobody does. The other big script problem is the lack of stakes. I’m not saying we needed Mando and Grogu to save all of reality. What we needed was a moment where one or both of them could potentially fail, and when they succeed, we see how it alters their relationship. Instead, there’s a sequence where one of them is in jeopardy. At the resolution of that sequence, the two of them just go back to exactly the way they were before. That makes for an ultimately unsatisfying story.

Speaking of unsatisfying, with one and a half exceptions, the cast is largely flat. Partially playing the Mandalorian,*** Pedro Pascal’s vocal performance is largely monotone, and during a non-helmeted sequence, Pascal is allowed to let out his charisma. As Ward, Sigourney Weaver just shows up briefly as Sigourney Weaver. I love her work, and it was highly annoying to me that she only gives Mando a mission, lightly scolds him for not bringing a target in alive, and listlessly pilots an x-wing. Jeremy Allen White’s vocal performance as Rotta is a little fun, and I liked that take that the son of Jabba the Hutt wants to be respected on his own merits. The only real time a performer comes alive and injects energy into the film is the vocal performance of Martin Scorsese**** as alien snitch Hugo Durant. Scorsese plays a motormouthed scumbag, and his few minutes in the film are delightful.

I know, I’ve spent a lot of time dunking on a perfectly harmless space adventure. Is the problem me? I love Andor because it’s a series about the creep of fascism and about how people survive, thrive, and fall under it, while also having kickass spaceships and blasters. Obviously, the Star Wars franchise has enough narrative flexibility to encompass a number of tones and genres, one of them being the space Western vibes of The Mandalorian and Grogu. I’m not saying everything needs to be political and heavy, I just expect stories to be told with care and intelligence. Maybe I’m an old man, hopelessly rooted in the past. Let’s bring in my son Liam, and see what he, as a representative for all of Generation Z, thinks about it.

Back in middle school, I remember when the first season of The Mandalorian came out. It was this incredible cultural experience, one of the last times I remember EVERYONE having seen a show. I loved that first season, enjoyed the second season, skipped the third, and then saw The Mandalorian and Grogu. There wasn’t the same hype this time. 

Fundamentally, I think the issue is that it doesn’t feel right. It’s not a western anymore. A lot of modern blockbusters have a similar vibe, where instead of the average film being about themes or broader ideas or tropes or genre, the modern franchise blockbuster is only about the franchise itself. The Harry Potter films are about the rise of fascism, the Fantastic Beasts films are about how cool the Harry Potter world is*****. The newest Star Wars has the same fundamental flaw. Instead of being an interesting western that is about the world beyond Star Wars, The Mandalorian and Grogu is about how cool all the Star Wars characters and creatures are. It’s a film hyperfocused with lore, so much so that it forgets to give us a story.

There you go. If you happen to stroll into a theater for The Mandalorian and Grogu, I guarantee you zero heavy lifting as an audience member. It’s the very definition of a “turn off your brain” movie. I wish for a lot of things. Decent leaders. A high-trust society. Right this minute, I wish for a Star Wars movie that I care about. 

*The word “saw” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, since my parents took me to the movie when I was around two years old. Also, why in God’s name would you take a two year old to a movie theater?

**I saw it at Seattle’s iconic Cinerama. Not a great movie, but an amazing theater. 

***Mando is played by three people. Pedro Pascal handles the voice work and one non-helmeted sequence. Brendan Wayne plays Mando when the helmet is on. Lateef Crowder performs the stunt and fight choreography.

****Yes, that Scorsese.

****I’m hijacking the footnotes, mostly to say that I’m not the biggest fan of Harry Potter in general. J.K. Rowling sucks. But those first films were about something!

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.