The Mandalorian And Grogu

Crest Of The Razor

The Mandalorian And Grogu
aka Star Wars: The Mandalorian 
And Grogu
Directed by Jon Favreau
USA 2026
Lucasfilm
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: This will probably have some very minor spoilers in it.

So the new attempt by Disney to pull some box office back from a franchise they’ve already run into the ground, namely the Star Wars franchise, is actually not a terrible movie... but it does have its problems. Titled The Mandalorian And Grogu, the film follows on from the TV show The Mandalorian and continues the exploits of Din Djarin (The Mandalorian, played by Pedro Pascale and a few others when he wears the mask) and Grogu (played mostly by CGI).

And, though the story is a completely stand alone adventure from the regular series... well therein lies the problem. 

Now, regular readers will know I’m not exactly the biggest fan of The Mandalorian but, in terms of that property, this is a pretty well put together movie, at least for the first half of the film (yeah, don’t worry, I’ll get there) and is much more enjoyable than the episodes of the TV show. That being said, although it’s a half good movie... is it a half good Star Wars movie? Well no, it still doesn’t quite feel like it belongs in the Star Wars universe, I would have to say. Although, to be fair, it does try its best... but it also tries to be a lot of things... some of which are really cool but, are equally not necessarily giving off Star Wars vibes. I mean, I don’t think George Lucas would ever had conceived of this as a story in quite this way and... depending on what generation of Star Wars viewer you are... that may well impede your reception to the movie, for sure.

Now the other thing about the film is that, although it ultimately tells one story, it does seem more episodic than I was expecting. Not episodic in the way the original movies were as they tried to emulate the old Flash Gordon serials (reviewed by me here, here and here) but more like the whole thing is a game of two halves... the first half being a James Bond style opening sequence followed by a rescue mission that goes wrong, nicely setting up some new characters and ending after a gladiatorial combat scene. And up to that point... apart from some issues like the old serial title crawl which featured in the original movies being absent, not to mention some large passages of synthesiser music replacing the traditional orchestral leitmotif one expects form a Star Wars film... it’s actually a pretty enjoyable movie. 

However, the second half, starting from where the main lead is taken prisoner as payback for his actions in the first half of the film, well it’s no less action packed but I found it mostly very dull (until Sigourney Weaver brings in the X-Wings at the end). I was looking at my watch in this part of the film because, yeah, it got gruellingly boring for me, I have to admit. 

Overall, though, the first half won me over somewhat and you do need to see this one on a big screen to fully capture the spectacle. Director Martin Scorcese turns up at one point (though you might not recognise him at first) and there’s a nice, if somewhat blatant, lifesize reconstruction of the Star Wars chess game from the original movie. Look at the floor of the arena and a better look at the aliens fighting there and you’ll see what I mean. But, there are also some blatant references (I think one building even says Nexus 7) to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (reviewed here) on one planet, which look good and are also vaguely reminiscent of stuff they’ve borrowed in other films in the franchise, such as Attack Of The Clones (reviewed here) but, nice as these sequences were (and they are pretty good at this stage of the movie), they didn’t quite add up to Star Wars for me. 

However, Ludwig Göransson’s score, which I’m complaining about a little above, is also pretty good and uses the themes he’s developed in the show pretty well (I might try and get a CD from somewhere if they bother to release it in this essential format). And I also thought the effects work, which some people seem to be complaining about, actually worked pretty well in this movie. Especially the one for the character of the son of Jabba The Hutt, which looks a bit clunky but certainly convinces you that a creature like this could do the things it does without crumpling to the floor every five seconds.

And that’s me done with The Mandalorian And Grogu... I hated the second half of the movie but I mostly had a good time with the rest of it and I’m glad I caught it at my local cinema, who seemed to have absolutely no clue as how to frame it on their screens but, yeah, lack of competency of the staff at Cineworld seems to be a thing which really hasn’t gotten better over the decades. Oh well.  

The Mandalorian Season 3

Boba Head Blues

The Mandalorian Season 3
Streaming March - April 2023
8 episodes

Okay, so I’m grudgingly watching the third series of The Mandalorian now because I feel like I should go and see the first new Star Wars movie we’ve had in cinemas for a while, in a couple of weeks. According to a work colleague, I also have to try and watch the woman who sounds like a sneeze series too, before I can fully appreciate the new film. So... yeah, I’ll need to try and catch up to that one too but I’m feeling less than optimistic. And I’m warning you right up front here... this is going to be a fairly short review. 

So, all in all, I thought this third season of the show was somewhat better than the last two, despite the fact that my favourite character hasn’t returned because the overly sensitive people at the nameless channel who are producing this show managed to cancel the actress who was the best thing about the show. But I’m not going in to all that rubbish here.
 
Now, maybe it’s because they’ve lost the 1950s-1970s TV western vibe they nicely had going for it in the previous two series and instead replaced it with an overriding story arc, is why I responded to this one more. Specifically to do with the character played by Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck in the modern reboot of Battlestar Galactica) and that kinda held my interest... it’s a way of keeping a few standalone stories in as side mission quests while constantly referring to the overall arc... a bit similar to the way The X Files finally wrecked themselves, when that overreaching arc needed resolving and outstayed its welcome. 

We have The Mandalorian played, as far as I know, by Pedro Pascal and his Lone Wolf And Cub-style sidekick Grogu, played by a bunch of pixels. I say as far as I know because, as is ‘the way’, Pascal never once shows his face in this series at all and two other actors also play the main character. So... I’m guessing that Pascal only provides the voice here but, I may be wrong.

And it’s entertaining enough, I guess. 

There are a few fair bad things about the show... like the longest and most interesting episode about the sabotaged reintegration of a former imperial clone specialist seeming to have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story other than a quick, plug in reference. Thus rendering it a pointless episode with no real punchline other than some clones, which you really already suspected were out there, being introduced literally as a throwaway moment in the last episode, which was already referred to enough in another episode. So... yeah, the most interesting bit of Star Wars in a while got kinda derailed before it had even got a chance to properly shine. 

Another episode starring Jack Black, musical artist Lizzo and Christopher Lloyd, is kind of like an adrenalised version of Franz Kafka’s The Trial but, rather than stay with that concept, just includes too much action and not enough of the main protagonists tying themselves in knots trying to get past the bureaucratic web. So, yeah. I definitely had some issues... not to mention that Grogu kind of plays a secondary role in these episodes. I wanted to see more of him in action than I was getting in this third series. 

But, for the sake of not being completely negative about the way a certain company has bought and managed to completely neutralise anything that was good about the Star Wars brand... there are a few nice things I’d like to shout out about here. 

So we had the mouse robot from the Death Star using the same sound sample, making yet another appearance here (plus it’s brought some friends). And we also had R5D4 from the original Star Wars movie (later renamed Episode IV - A New Hope for the various 1978 and 1979 re-releases) playing a major role as The Mandalorian’s new droid. I still have my old 1978 action figure of this droid up in my loft and they haven’t changed much about the character (it maybe looks slightly less beat up). 

The other nice thing was Mando (to his friends) working his way through a set of delayed opening shield doors and taking out various troopers as he goes. It was done in a slightly different manner but it was a nice nod to the best of the prequel movies, The Phantom Menace... and it allowed for the same sense of frustrated anticipation in the characters watching from the opposite side of the various shield doors. So that was good stuff. 

And, yeah, sorry but that’s me done for this season. I’m kinda hoping both characters meet their final fates in the new movie (death or whatever), selfishly so I don’t have to sit through another season of this show. The House Of Mouse definitely need to calm their Star Wars output down and desist from watering down the franchise anymore, I feel. Just release a new movie every three to ten years may be a better way of continuing the brand. At least that’s how I’d deal with what they’ve done to it. But, hey, I’m sure they’re making more short term money just milking it dry for now so, yeah, you can tell I’m not that optimistic about the Star Wars franchise these days. This is the way.