Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
Disney brings us a bloated big-screen episode of its TV series with even more fighting and even more monsters, all to brain-numbing effect.
Close call: The Mandalorian and Grogu make another daring escape
Image courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
In the year of 1977, the face of science-fiction was changed forever. Even as the genre was considered defunct, the youthful zeal of George Lucas rekindled mass elation with his old-fashioned homage to Flash Gordon and its ilk. Indeed, back then his relatively low-budget space opera became the highest-grossing film of all time. Extraordinary new characters, robots and alien lifeforms became a part of the pop cultural language and a sequel followed three years later, and another one three years after that. After the second sequel, there was a second trilogy of blockbusters and then another trilogy, culminating with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. There were also stand-alone films and a total of fifteen different spin-off TV series (animated and live-action) and with Walt Disney taking over Twentieth Century Fox, Disney+ got in on the act and produced the live-action series The Mandalorian under the aegis of Jon Favreau. Some fans, it seems, just cannot get enough.
This spin-off movie is one for the fans. While there is the comfortable familiarity of the Stormtroopers, the towering Imperial Walkers, the slug-like Hutts and the endlessly inquisitive Baby Yoda – aka Grogu – much will be new to non-subscribers of Disney+. Pedro Pascal returns as the eponymous bounty hunter Mando, a soldier of fortune entirely encased in state-of-the-art armour with a mirrored helmet, so anybody could have played him. On this occasion he is enlisted by Sigourney Weaver’s leader of the New Republic's Adelphi Rangers to locate the nephew of the Hutt twins, tucked away somewhere in the universe. And so commandeering a souped-up Razor Crest spaceship, with his lucky mascot, Grogu, by his side, Mando puts the pedal to the metal and warp-speeds it to the planet Shakari.
There are adventures to be had, new monsters to encounter, battles to be won and villains to best, all set to Ludwig Goransson’s invigorating score. And with a $165 million budget, the special effects are indeed special, although with barely any human connection – we see Pascal’s face for, what?, five minutes? – it is a very mechanical ride. At least in Disney’s Predator: Badlands – the eighth chapter in that particular franchise – we got to see Elle Fanning’s visage, even if she was only playing half a robot. Here, we are treated to an endless supply of CGI’d creatures and hardware, so that at times the film seems like a cartoon. And it all feels so crushingly same-old, which no end of cute sound effects can beg to differ. There is no sense of jeopardy, as Mando seems indestructible and squeezes out of every difficulty thrown at him, with Grogu hopping along in his shadow, silently calculating the money he’ll make from the toy sales. It is all epically tedious and meaningless, another big-screen barnacle of a TV series, but scarcely in the same class as the Downton Abbey movies. It is, patently, another example of the media malady that blurs the line between film and television, animation and live-action and fantasy and reality. It’s hard to know these days which way is up.
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Matthew Willig, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Jonny Coyne, Brendan Wayne, Lateef Crowder, with the voices of Jeremy Allen White, Martin Scorsese, Anthony Daniels.
Dir Jon Favreau, Pro Kathleen Kennedy, Ian Bryce, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, Screenplay Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, Ph David Klein, Pro Des Doug Chiang and Andrew L. Jones, Ed Rachel Goodlett Katz and Dylan Firshein, Music Ludwig Goransson, Costumes Mary Zophres, Sound David Acord.
Lucasfilm Ltd/Fairview Entertainment-Walt Disney Studios.
131 mins. USA. 2026. UK and US Rel: 22 May 2026. Cert. 12A.
