Bring out your blasters and ignite your light sabers because Star Wars is returning to cinemas for the first time this decade, seven years on from the main Saga’s conclusion with Episode IX in 2019.
That gap has been bridged somewhat by a steady stream of TV releases on Disney+, with just about any character you can think of getting some kind of look in, be they Jedi or Sith; big or Maul. Of that number, The Mandalorian originally felt like the jewel in the crown of the Disney+ era, introducing us to the adorable Grogu (the artist formerly known as Baby Yoda) and Pedro Pascal’s steely, mysterious bounty hunter – Din Djarin, ‘Mando’ to his mates.
Three years on from the show’s third season, which aired to rather lukewarm reception, Mando and his surrogate son (a Jedi in training) return to a galaxy far, far away for their first silver screen outing. Writer/director Jon Favreau (the man behind Iron Man and the Lion King remake) makes the jump from streaming to the cinema, too, with long-time collaborator and the recently-announced new Creative Head of Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni, as co-writer. Together, they send our dynamic duo on a mission to rescue Rotta the Hutt, son of Jabba, from an exploitative fighting ring, a quest that will pit them face-to-helmet with all manner of creatures and quarries. And Sigourney Weaver is also there…
‘The old protect the young, and then the young protect the old…’
If any of that sounds familiar to you, then you may well have seen 2008’s The Clone Wars, the animated movie that kickstarted seven seasons’ worth of intergalactic outings. Quite apart from now being old enough to stroll into the Mos Eisley Cantina and order itself a fresh Jawa Juice, that film, too, centred on saving the exact same Hutt, so The Mandalorian and Grogu feels as though it’s retreading old ground right from the word go. It’s not the sort of thing worth turning to the dark side over, but it is rather baffling that in a universe this vast with so many planets to explore and people to meet, two out of thirteen movies centre on saving a great big slug.
One has to wonder if Filoni (the famous auteur of ‘Cowboy Hat Star Wars’ due to his great love of stetsons) is the architect of such choices, having directed that aforementioned Clone Wars movie. It would certainly explain the presence of the huge purple Lasat warrior, Zeb, a beloved character from another of Filoni’s shows – Star Wars: Rebels – as the team’s ocasional space age chauffeur. As a fan of the show, it’s nice to see him, but the fact that he’s given nothing to do just smacks of fan service to get fans into the theatres. He’s not really a character here; very few people are.
Season 3 had a dullness to it, with plenty of time spent developing the New Republic built on the back of the Original Trilogy’s rebellion against the evil Empire. It also delved rather too deep into the history of the Mandalorians themselves, a nomadic people left scattered after the siege of their homeworld. As this new film played out, I appreciated the comparatively lighter tone.
With so much action and the adorable Grogu running about, it feels like a Saturday morning cartoon (similar to Filoni’s other work) and the narrative moves from set piece to set piece at a breakneck pace that lends itself to a swashbuckling rollercoaster ride. The problem with near-constant action done in this way, though, is that there’s little time for anything to develop, be it themes, characters or otherwise. What’s worse is how little of an effort the film makes to even attempt to flesh out its story – it genuinely feels strangely disinterested in allowing its central characters to grow or change in any way, perhaps for fear of upsetting the (marketable) status quo.
This isn’t the first Star Wars film to suffer from this problem, though. If anything, it feels like the start of a worrying trend after the Saga-capping Rise of Skywalker bent itself out of shape trying to please fans left seething by the bold swings of its predecessor, The Last Jedi. There’s always been an eye-watering amount of money to be made selling Star Wars merchandise – anything from sabers to action figures; Jedi robes to theme park tickets. I can see the thought process behind keeping everything in a safe, saleable position, milking this duo for everything they’re worth (they were once separated and hastily thrown back together when someone no doubt realised that such a split would be bad for business) but the fact that both characters seem to begin and end in exactly the same headspace, their growth almost entirely negligible, feels unsatisfying for a blockbuster outing.
When this film was originally announced, it seemed to be exactly what fans following each of the streaming shows had hoped for – one major event that would bring all our characters together to fight the ultimate evil: a blue man in a suit (I’d try to explain, but I just can’t). Star Wars has had its down periods before, with sixteen years between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace and ten between the end of the Prequels and the start of the Sequels in 2015, but whenever it did finally come back, it did so with a bang. The Mandalorian and Grogu has made no such stir – you’d be forgiven for not even realising such a supposedly big franchise was even back in cinemas. That just feels like a shame.
The film is a loud, brash zig-zag between different planets with a fair helping of cute, funny slapstick scenes starring everybody’s favourite not-quite-Yoda, Grogu (well, who else would it be…Yaddle?) and a quartet of tiny Anzellan engineers voiced by Glenrothan’s own Shirley Henderson. The action is serviceable enough, but never justifies its cinema screen with anything as gripping as Mando’s fight against the sand worm-esque Krayt Dragon or his daring rescue of Grogu from the clutches of the cunning Moff Gideon, which are both readily available, among dozens of other adventures, on Disney+ at no additional cost. I had every hope that this film would be able to take all the benefits of a big-budget film release and create something as fantastic as the height of the show’s first two seasons, but it just doesn’t hit the mark.
Of all the film’s moving parts, Ludwig Gorannson’s score is really the only piece of the puzzle that seems to understand the register at which this film ought to be working.
He’s been with the show since its inception, but he’s also won Oscars for his work on films like Oppenheimer and Sinners, and he clearly knows how to take the scope of a cinema release and run with it, creating a fantastic new iteration of the main theme that opens the movie with style. His music does a lot to levy the action, too, which is a mercy, given how much of it there is, but it just isn’t enough for what this ought to be.
I don’t know that I’ve ever left a Star Wars film quite so underwhelmed.
There’s nothing frustrating about it. Fans won’t be denouncing it completely and demanding its erasure from the timeline as they have done with previous instalments, because there is simply nothing there to anger them. In a way, that’s worse.
I could appreciate a film that took bold swings without fear of fan outrage. At least Jar-Jar Binks was a distinct choice; this is just fluffy fights in space with some characters you might have seen before, and (let’s not forget) Sigourney Weaver. There was some fun to be had while it was on, but by the end, I felt like I’d had a bit of bad junk food and within about twelve parsecs, I needed something else.
BBFC: Rated 12A for moderate violence, threat, injury detail.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is in cinemas now.
