The Mandalorian was the big series that launched with Disney+, that captured the attention of Star Wars fans, giving us our first look at a live action series set in the universe, giving fans some hope at the same time that it lost a lot of fans after the flop that was The Rise of Skywalker. The Mandalorian continued to score with a second season that was just as good as the first. This is when the tide started to turn, The Book of Boba Fett felt like a let down, and waste to fans, Obi Wan Kenobi was the same, and did anyone watch Skeleton Crew? Despite the huge highs that Andor gave it both seasons, it still felt like Star Wars TV was struggling, which continued with The Acolyte and Ahsoka, both of which had moments but didn’t fully land. The Mandalorian Season 3 continued this trend with ups and downs and ultimately felt flat. Season 4 was initially on the way, but was decided to turn to a theatrical entry first.
The Mandalorian and Grogu sees Mandalorian, Din Djarin and his little apprentice, Grogu are Bounty Hunters for the New Republic, their latest mission sees them heading to the Hutt twins, who want their nephew, Rotta back in return they will give the New Republic information on a former Empire worker, but can the twins be trusted?
A big worry for this was that it would it just feel like a few episodes of The Mandalorian smashed together for a couple of hours, and then whether it was worth even being on the big screen. Unfortunately, it’s hard to deny those worries. There were a few points during the film where it felt like the perfect point to cut for the end of that episode, and then the story moved on. It does remind me of what we’ve recently seen with Illumination films, where it feels like short films stuck together. I will say this film does it a lot better, and there’s much more of a plot than those films have, but it’s hard to ignore the similarity.
The writing team consists of Noah Kloor, Dave Filoni and the director, Jon Favreau, who have all been onboard writing the show from the beginning, and might have taken some missteps but on the whole deserve some praise. With the film taking on a slightly bigger scale for the bigger screen, it needed a bigger story which doesn’t fully deliver. It has moments but ultimately just feels another part of this story, and doesn’t have any particular huge impact on where the characters are at moving forward.
They continue to use the same cinematographer, David Klein, who has come under scrutiny for their use of the volume. The volume is a technology that is essentially a massive screen that works in tandem with the screen, allowing visual effects for backgrounds to be edited in real time to match the demands, however this means the actors have limited space to move around in. Use of this technology is good for certain scenes, but shouldn’t be something that’s relied on overly, but was during the series, making a few set pieces feel tiny. With a bigger budget, I was hoping for bigger set pieces, which is slightly the case. It is definitely better at feeling less like the typical volume stage, but still feels smaller than what a big blockbuster film should.
I would normally talk about the cast, but it feels pointless doing that in a film like this because much of the cast are CGI characters or 95% of the time wearing a helmet. However, the biggest praise goes to John Rosengrant, Trevor Hensley, Hiroshi Ikeuchi, Jason Matthews and Mike Manzel who are the 5 people who all work as a team to puppeteer Grogu. The work they manage to do (yes, I understand they do some CGI cleanup at times) is insanely impressive, and the sort of level we expect from Star Wars, a franchise that has always been at the forefront of practical effects. Grogu is the star of this film, and has been the most talked about part of the series. He certainly has the most funny moments in the film, and if you don’t enjoy them then you’re just heartless. I could easily watch a film just of him, and want to see him throughout his characters journey. It’s insane how much better Grogu and other puppets look ahead of the likes of The Hutts, which look odd and feel not quite right, especially given how iconic the puppet version of Jabba the Hutt is in Return of the Jedi.
A continued shining light in this is the score from Ludwig Goransson. He has continued to go from height to height during his career, now sitting with 3 Oscars for his work on Black Panther, Oppenheimer and Sinners, and will likely be in the discussion for a 4th as he reteams up with Christopher Nolan for The Odyssey. His unique sounds mixed with Star Wars have always worked well, with this score particularly having moments depending on the planet where it sounds almost Tron: Legacy like, in the best way.
Overall, The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fun film that is more than enjoyable for fans of the series, but doesn’t deliver on the potential it could’ve had to make the big screen feel more worth the scale that the characters deserve, and think we will likely just see them return to the smaller screen. At the bare minimum, I’m glad to see the Star Wars universe back on the big screen after it’s 7 year break, before we get Star Wars: Starfighter next year (a film I’m more worried about).
What did you think of The Mandalorian and Grogu?
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