In the history of live action Star Wars films — 11 by my count — there hadn’t been one giving us something we hadn’t seen before since Return of the Jedi in 1983. Everything else has been filling in the previously unknown details of a story we already knew, or continuing a story we already knew.
Does that mean Jon Favreau‘s The Mandalorian and Groguactually feels like something new? I wouldn’t go that far. Not only is a lot of sturdy old Star Wars material dredged back up (there are Hutts aplenty), but the two title characters have been stars of three seasons of their own TV show, containing adventures similar to this one.
But the film does feel free from the narrative burdens of a continuing canon storyline that requires slavish devotion and regular fan service. Which is not to say there isn’t plenty of fan service here, some working better than others. It’s just that The Mandalorian and Grogu has permission to be purely episodic in nature, more like a James Bond movie than a Star Wars movie, kicked off by a cold open that recalls many of Bond’s pre-credits amuse bouches. That energy sustains the film for quite a while before the film predictably overstays its welcome.
But what a good initial welcome, though it does put us in fan service territory straight away. The titular bounty hunter (Pedro Pascal) swoops in on a meeting held by a glorified crime boss with ties to the empire, or what’s left of it in the immediate years after the rebels formed a new republic following the destruction of the second Death Star. There will be AT-ATs involved on this wintry Hoth-like planet, trying to stomp him and his wordless companion, a Force-gifted child who was originally known to us as Baby Yoda because of his biological similarity to the old Jedi master from the original series. (Wordless, but not free from adorable coos and other non-verbal emissions that made him an instant fan favourite.)
The real mission is to find a bigger empire bigwig, whose identity is shrouded in mystery but whose location might be known by twin Hutts, the brother and sister of Jabba the Hutt. With the iconic Sigourney Weaver serving as his handler and his purse, Mando is sent off to their planet, where he’ll need to seek out their kidnapped nephew on a different planet. Baby Yoda, meet Baby Jabba.
Rotta the Hutt is indeed a captive, forced into a contract to fight all comers in a colosseum setting in a big city on this other planet. He’s actually more of a late teenager than a baby. If you thought Hutts were constitutionally incapable of moving, it turns out most of them are just lazy, as Rotta makes a formidable foe and hasn’t yet been defeated. And if you thought Hutts couldn’t speak English, that’s wrong too, as Jeremy Allen White‘s voice emanates from the mouth of this slithery creature. (And that’s never not sort of weird, though you get used to it.)
It turns out Rotta wants nothing to do with the legacy of his deceased father, and is actually rather kind, but may not make it out of the final fight of his contract without Mando’s help. Nor is he keen to be returned to the more traditionally sinister clutches of his aunt and uncle.
Rotta’s fights are probably the place The Mandalorian and Grogu gives us the best mix of new and old. Jabba the Hutt didn’t seem to be able to move an inch, but most species don’t survive very long by being sitting ducks for their pray, and we see here how a Hutt might be a viable participant in the Darwinian world on the intergalactic food chain. And fans looking for less obvious Easter eggs will be delighted to note that some of the creatures Rotta fights are right out of that game of hologram chess we saw aboard the Millennium Falcon back in ’77.
This planet also features a food vendor who looks like a four-armed monkey, who can give Mando some of the intel he needs, but not without a fair bit of neurosis. Who better to voice this creature than Martin Scorsese? This character might be the dividing line between the haters and those who end up appreciating The Mandalorian and Grogu, but he’s used in small enough doses, only two scenes, that it works.
Where The Mandalorian and Grogu stops working quite as well is when it starts meandering in its second half. If there was any Star Wars movie that should have been a crisp 100 minutes, it’s this one, especially since that would already be twice the length of the adventures we watched this pair have on Disney+. When The Mandalorian and Grogu goes on for 30 minutes beyond those 100 minutes, you start to squirm, and the unnecessary incursion of other more traditional Star Wars fan service does nothing to alleviate that. There are elements here poached from other original series locales, not just Hoth, as Dagobah and Endor are both also evoked. At least there’s no Tatooine stand-in, that setting having already been sufficiently covered in the series.
But credit Favreau and company deserve credit for trying to do enough new within the limitations of our expectations. One example is Ludwig Goransson‘s score, which plays of the iconic, Spaghetti western-inflected themes from his score for the TV show, but expands them outward from there. This score has an EDM bent to it in certain moments, giving us the “not your father’s Star Wars” feeling we need from a project like this. (There’s even a Mariachi version of the theme song closing out the end credits, further indication of a general playfulness in this movie.)
Early critical reactions to The Mandalorian and Grogu seem to continue the general trend that it’s correct to hate on Star Wars now. It’s easy to say you don’t like things, because negativity is almost always respected in the critical landscape. But the TV show this is based on was actually a source of renewed critical pride in the franchise, and this movie delivers well enough on that. Star Wars can rarely live up to our demands for its perfection, and viewed within that context, The Mandalorian and Grogu is pretty darn okay.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is currently playing in Australian cinemas.
