Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
Director ~  Jon Favreau
Writers ~ Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Noah Kloor
2026, US
Stars ~ Pedro Pascal, Brendan Wayne, Lateef Crowder

Okay… (deep breath): first two seasons of ‘The Mandalorian’ were hugely enjoyable for undemanding pulp sci-fi. Aside from ‘Andor’, many of the endless Disney ‘Star Wars’ spin-off series that I have tried have inspired me to abandon them at various stages because of, oh I don’t know, that the franchise is plagued with negible writing and characterisation, for example. It seemed that ‘The Mandalorian’ was what we sort of expected Boba Fett to be, and maybe only the Sandpeople episodes of the ‘Boba Fett’ series seemed to hit expectations, although there was sporadic fun to be had. ‘Boba Fett’ even turned into ‘The Mandalorian’ for a chunk, explaining why the latter’s third season was quite messy. I was won over by Grogu, even though that kind of cutesy thing was expected to be why I wouldn’t be convinced (ref. Ewoks, and Ja-Ja Binks). That Grogu is a puppet and doesn’t do the CGI thing so much is the key ingrediant to his success.

Which is kept for the film ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ where the fun is in the buddy chemistry between the former’s bounty hunter seriousness and Grogu’s muppety goodness: the former’s daddy disapproval and the latter’s todler behaviour. The general consensus and criticism is that it feels like a TV series dressed as a film, but I am wondering if that is just a side-effect of the fact that TV is looking more cinematic than ever. ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ frequently offers some gorgeous visuals – TIE fighters in the sunset, spaceships in warp drive, Frank Frazetta inspiration, for example – and never lacks for that even if it is mostly Mando punching CGI for a lot of the time (physics optional). It is one long sequence of action CGI set-pieces and only slows down to let Grogu step down from his shoulder-parrot position to take centre stage. What is clear is this is very much leaning into the children’s entertainment angle of ‘Star Wars’, and for that it is far more successful than the series’ pretentions to adulthood (I’m not including ‘Rogue One’ or ‘Andor’, which are legitamately mature). In fact, I will argue that it is the most successful of the outright kid-friendly element of ‘Star Wars’, perhaps even a better crossover than ‘Skeleton Crew’ (which I lost interest in; and ‘Ashoka’ was ultimately just embarassing). The stoic father-figure anti-hero of Mando is offset by the unapologetic cuteness of the Grogu puppet.

An undemanding romp with simple narrative that gets Din Djarin the Mandolorian from one fight to another, Martin Scorsese and Sigourney Weaver cameos for the film nerds, a little politics of some double-crossing, some nice spaceship porn, some daft extraterrestials which have always been a staple of ‘Star Wars’ even since the cantina, some pleasing synth score by Ludwig Göransson rather than the Williams orchestral approach, and … buff slug aliens? No matter how much Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White) is meant to be the tragic figure of this adventure with the most story-arc, there’s no getting away from how funny the buff Hutt look is, although the rolling maneauvre when fighting is a nice, logical touch. 

‘Star Wars’ has always been a mess and a platform for disagreements, so for obsessive fans that take it very seriously, ‘The Mandolorian and Grogu’ is likely to outrage because it uses the universe just as a playpen, or it will be embraced just for being in that world. It’s very much the ‘PEW-PEW-PEW!’ end of pulpy scifi made with a huge budget: just enjoy the sets and the ambience – one city has a little ‘Blade Runner’ overcrowded neon vibe. No, it is nowhere near the heights of ‘Rogue One’, which jettison’s the juvenilia, but it lies at the other end of the ‘Star Wars’ spectrum and is nowhere near the nedirs of other sequels. It is long enough for you to note the weaknesses in full and there’s no real substance, so if you’re looking for more, you won’t get it. But Jon Favreau knows what he is doing and delivers, embracing the silliness in a non-condescending way that makes this a very family friendly crossover. 

One moment in: 'Exists'

Exists

Eduardo Sanchez, 2014, USA

‘Exists’ is a pretty average monster horror. It suffers, as these things tend to do, from unremarkable and frequently annoying twentysomething characters, the kind you can’t particularly be too concerned with. It’s also a shakycam p.o.v. “found footage” film, with all the weaknesses that brings with it. However, it is a bigfoot film and it’s here it wins. When the p.o.v. aesthetic works, its effective to giving in an “insiders” view of horror moments we are familiar with: I’m thinking of the monster’s p.o.v. when they fly off in ‘V/H/S/’ and ‘Jaruzalem’, or the ending of ‘The Borderlands’. In ‘Exists’, there are effective shots of the sasquatch running through the woods to catch up with a victim cycling away, but better than that, and the one shot that means this film will always overcome its weaknesses with me, is that phenomenal, convincing, elongated close-up of the beast at the end. I always thought that Chewbacca was probably the most convincing alien in ‘Star Wars’ and, here, such a convincing man-in-a-suit design creates something truly scary and magnificent in the monster pantheon. All the way through the film, I wondered if we would ever get to actually see, properly, the monster. I mean, it wouldn’t necessarily matter – after all, ‘Willow Creek’ scared me and is probably my favourite Sasquatch film despite the absence of bigfoot sightings – but then when the bigfoot got his close-up, and sustained it, I was mesmerised. Many sasquatch films have kept the beast at arm’s-length, because after all it is just a man in a monster suit and it’s best not to reveal its shortcomings too much, and anyway things are better with a little mystery. But this monster-mask is convincing, scary and is thoroughly able of absorbing scrutiny. 

Rogue One

Gareth Edwards, 2016, USA

I found myself going around disparaging ‘The Force Awakens’, or at least indifferent to its ‘Star Wars’ charms. When I have heard people say “It’s shit,” I’m half in agreement and half thinking that I wouldn’t quite go that far. I know that people enthuse about it, but then I remember its overall clunkiness and unwillingness to move beyond fanboy call-backs, its neglect of key implications so that all the fun of sci-fi hardware and swashbuckling becomes vacuous. I can just about live with its humanising Stormtroopers (but why?) but Han Solo’s martyrdom is surely ill thought-out in its rush to be emotional. By putting his personal drama first and sacrificing himself, isn’t he ensuring the evolution of the new Death Star (or whatever) and therefore condemning entire planets to death and doesn’t this make him a selfish dick? And its a narrative built on self-reference that doesn’t transcend its reliance on nostalgia.

Luckily, ‘Rogue One’ is here to show how it’s all done. I liked Gareth Edwards’ ‘Monsters’ a lot (a sci-fi version of ‘Before Sunrise’ perhaps) but was not impressed with ‘Godzilla’ (effects strong; narrative weak). I was anticipating this expansion of the ‘Star Wars’ universe would similarly tip over into disappointment but that wasn’t the case. There will be nothing new story-wise but that isn’t what we came for: a certain predictability and simplicity is surely why these films have such mainstream appeal. And there’s enough details to satisfy fans that like to argue and make theories over minutiae (like what is  Forrest Whitaker actually doing?). It was never possible to predict as a kid that the opening crawl of the original of ‘Star Wars’ would lead to ‘Rogue One’ decades later, or indeed that it would have such a grip on popular culture. I mean even as I write this, I am drinking from a ‘Rogue One’ tie-in mug my sister bought me at Christmas.

Despite being well over two hours, Chris Weitz’s and Tony Gilroy’s screenplay keeps things brisk so that the action breezes along until the final battle: it hardly seems that length. It probably has the least clunky dialogue of any ‘Star Wars’ film and it carries the most mature tone since ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. The overriding theme is of self-sacrifice which is a far more tangible focus than the abstract born again resurgence of The Force. This also widens the naive black-and-white morality of the earlier entries in that it casts the Rebels as also having to follow an end-justifies-the-means agenda, making things a lot greyer than they have been previously.*  It’s also more fitting for the template it derives from war films. Also too, it’s devoid of Muppets so that is a bonus. 

‘Star Wars’ is known to make even an esteemed, capable actor look crap, but there is none of that here. It benefits from having someone as great as Ben Mendalsohn to flesh out an otherwise rote villain, and the commitment of Felicity Jones, Diego Luna and others to enliven the protagonists. But what it does have, which throws a spanner in the works and takes you out of the flow, is a CGI Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin. We have actor Guy Henry walking about but the face is all CGI, giving a new Peter Cushing performance. Apparently. What is this new thing, a performance from a long respected and deceased actor, by a digital effect? I’m a Cushing fan – rarely could an actor bring such dignity to so much silliness – but I don’t feel on side with this, regardless that I can see why they would choose to do so (hey, gotta please the fans - callback!). It’s not quite the same thing as using a deceased celebrity’s likeness for advertisement purposes (that being nakedly about making money whereas at least this can be seen as in the service of story), but this is not a performance by Cushing. It’s being framed as enhanced make-up, but it’s beyond that: if IMDB ever puts ‘Rogue One’ as Cushing’s final performance, that would be a wrong-doing. “'Morbid and off-putting' or 'convincing'?” asks The Telegraph: I would say both.** And it’s also true that the sardonic robot K-2SO gets the best lines and proves the film’s break-out star, and that tells you something.

But back to the positive: Edwards’ incidentally breaks out some genuine beauty, which is not quite an ingredient quickly associated with ‘Star Wars’: the shadow-half of the Death Star, or the natural coastal beauty of planet Scarfi, for example. The reveals are mostly artfully done, with an eye on how they will have most impact: the AT-ST Walker appearing through the fog of war, for example. But then there is also C3PO and R2-D2 shoehorned-in briefly and one can see why detractors complain about the cameos (for me, they were not as cumbersome and pandering as those in ‘The Force Awakens’).*** 

Scarfi is where the final battle takes place - and what a battle it is. It’s multi-levelled but always fluid and coherent. Anyone looking to be awe-inspired will find it here: anyone inclined to marvel at spaceships and the swash-buckling end of sci-fi will not be disappointed. Rarely has the sheer size-of-things in such a space-based battle been evoked. And then there is some of the best saved for the last few minutes, showing how Darth Vader can take on a whole army without breaking a sweat. B. Alan Orange does have a point that this is so successful a moment that segueing into ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ is going to make Vader look more subdued and disappointing. Nevertheless, so thrilling and epic is this battle that it may cause some to see this as the best in the series. For me, it’s alongside the Hoth battle.****

I did come away knowing that I had gone “Wow” a number of times. Even Chirrut Îmwe’s (Donnie Chen) first melee struck me as a touch above standard choreography for the series (yes yes, there is the fight with Darth Maul, but there is a fluidity here with action and editing that seemed attuned with the heightened expectations of contemporary action fans). As this review attests, whereas ‘The Force Awakens’ had the opposite effect, with ‘Rogue One’ I find myself lingering on all the positives and ready to defend it. I’ve always thought that the truly interesting ‘Star Wars’ material was in the secondary details – the Sand People; Boba Fett; Chewbacca (always secondary to Han); scavenging from a Star Destroyer crashed in the desert, etc. – which implies that it’s the Extended Universe of ‘Star Wars’ that interests me more, and I am sure I am not the only one: George Lucas’ true master-stroke was to let fans make ‘Star Wars’ their own, which is why it has lasted so long and we have the Extended Universe. ‘Rogue One’ is a great action flick that doesn’t let the inherent weaknesses of the ‘Star Wars’ franchise get in the way of exceptional set pieces. 

 *   The humanising of John Boyega’s Stormtrooper doesn’t particularly provide a grey area as it’s all about redemption; and the tone of ‘The Force Awakens’ isn’t really interested in investigating his conflict to any great depth. He’s an innocent that’s been indoctrinated into something bad and wants out.
**   There is no such ethical debate about the same techniques rendering a younger Carrie Fisher cameo as she was alive to give her consent at the time. Nevertheless, this too is jarring, our familiarity with this uncanny valley perhaps leading us to see the other effects as just a glorified video game. Indeed, the game adaptation will probably look just like this. Anecdotally, I was overhearing a conversation where a guy was saying the Grand Moff Tarkin and young Leia cameos were the film highlights, and I don’t think he was being totally ironic.
***   When does this moment occur: two-thirds of the way in? The point is that it was just before this gratuitous cameo that I realised the bulky profile of the man along the row was actually obscuring his son who couldn’t have been more than five years old. The boy had been totally quiet all this time sot that I hadn’t even known he was there, only climbing onto his dad and being restless for about ten minutes of the film at this point: when C3PO and R2-D2 appeared. He yelped with delight. Then he climbed back into his own seat and was quiet for the rest of it. Despite the questionable fact of whether he should be watching, the fact that it kept him quiet surely attests to how engrossing it is for even such a young audience.
**** It occurs to me that the Star Destroyers colliding is the manifesting of kids playing with their toys and bashing them together.

Battlestar Galactica

Glen A. Larson, 1978, USA

An obvious 'Star Wars' rip-off that nevertheless owes much to others such as ‘Star Trek’, ‘Space 1999’, war films and even – with one shot of a planet’s underground caverns – ‘Forbidden Planet’. It certainly grabs from everything it can, being part of a whole post-‘Star Wars’ pulp sci-fi boom featuring the likes of ‘Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century’, ‘Flash Gordon’, etc. ‘Battlestar Galactica’ wins no awards for advancing the themes and cause of science-fiction. We are in the future where people have names like Starbuck, Boomer, Casseopia and Athena, where every little boy wants to be a starfighter and where good humans fight bad aliens. The politicians are self-indulgent buffoons, helping the enemy by making all the wrong moves. The family and the military are the only saving graces in this world. Unadventurous ethics, plot and characterisation aside, this is decent and campy if undemanding entertainment. No, it’s not good but it does have charm, although much of this now must be to do with its datedness. The Cylons are perhaps better conceived and certainly more unique than Stormtroopers, perhaps akin more to ‘Dr Who’s Cybermen in pace and attitude.

They certainly make immediate impression with their vocorder voice, aura of humming and their silver armour causing incessant lens flares. They don’t quite break out into the Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Mr. Blue Sky’ but they’re definitely of their time. It’s open to debate which are the scariest (me, I was always disappointed to discover that Stormtroopers were just men-in-suits rather than androids/cyborgs/robots).

The spaceships look good – agreeably well-used look rather – and John Dyskra’s special effects are above average (vapour trails in space!), yet its origins in television dominates throughout the plotting, uninspired camerawork and especially the clunky dialogue. The streak of tele-sentimentalism simplifies its outlook on family, loss, children, and cute robot dogs. Structurally, having been cut up from episodes of the television series, it starts with a climax, slows down for subplots and build-up, than goes out with a big-ish showdown.There is some welcome mystery when the ‘Galactica’ stumbles upon a desolate planet and discovers a casino, and some ghoulishness is provided by the alien Ovians, but this is absolute pulp. There’s some pretence to a mythical quest, to Noah’s Ark, to the desperation of refugees, and luckily – if less profitably – lacks the born-again subtext of ‘Star Wars’ ‘the Force’. If anything, despite being inferior, ‘Battlestar Galactica’ shows-up ‘Star Wars’ pretensions, if that’s possible, but also its strengths. ‘Star Wars’ is, for all its flaws, the better film because it has a magic ingredient that makes it work. But having said, for all its cutesy trimmings ‘Battlestar Galactica’ is more mature, being a much darker and troubled tale of humans fleeing murderous robots that only want to wipe them out.  Desperation leads this story rather than an ol' fight between 'Good versus Evil'  and,  for all its cutesy trimmings, that makes this premise more interesting  and one that the updated ‘Battlestar Galactica’ series of the early 2000s could run with.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens - some notes

Yes: there will be spoilers.

·        It’s fine.

·       You know that ‘Star Wars’ thing you liked? Plot-wise, this just traces over that with more effects.

·     Even as a kid, I sensed that the dialogue of ‘Star Wars’ (it wasn’t quite ‘A new Hope’ to us then) was deeply lacking, even though I wasn’t able to articulate it. Something about how the dialogue onscreen could be transposed word-for-word to the comic book adaptation that I bought highlighted its limitations. And don’t worry: that dialogue will now be catchphrases and they will be quoted here.

·           John Boyega is good. Of course, I was pre-disposed to be in favour of him because I love ‘Attack the Block’ so. Even so, he shades Finn with just a degree of cowardice that makes him far more interesting and three dimensional than his written gusto demands.

·     But if Stormtroopers are no longer clones here but kidnapped children programmed to be evil, then are we supposed to consider them as more than disposable henchmen and start colouring in their life stories with empathy? I mean, they are kidnapped children…

·   And if, quite clearly, Finn’s brainwashing didn’t take, what does that say about The First Order’s programming?

·  Daisy Ridley as Rey is good too, less sappy than the Luke Skywalker persona coz feisty girls sell these days (and there’s some debate as to whether Leia was short-changed on this in the original series).

·    These are nice alien vistas. Gigantic spaceships in dunes, X-Wings flying over water,  etc.

·   Well okay, this is a universe where robots are programmed to be cute. And where a future Sith lord built a gold robot and programmed it to be whiny and camp. I guess I’ll have to just suck it up and accept.

·  Wow, Rey is sure instantaneously excellent at knowing languages, flying the Millenium Falcon, lightsabers and The Force. Luckily, she doesn’t need any training scenes like Luke in the first series.

· Speaking of which, Finn is pretty instantly nifty with a lightsaber for a former Stormtrooper too. A sanitation Stormtrooper. And they put sanitation Stormtroopers on planet raids? (Yeah yeah, it's a callback to the original or whatever...)

·   Wait, if Han is sacrificing himself for his son’s betterment, doesn’t that getting-ahead-in-the-Dark-Side include blasting entire planets and killing billions and billions? What on earth was going through Han’s head??

·    I like Chewbacca. Why don’t they make anything of his super-strength? He also spends about a scene grieving over Han before reverting to Chewieness.

·   And speaking of destroying planets on a grudge and a whim: what about the planet's resources? Seems like a foolhardy waste... And this is the point where I suspect I’m over-thinking this trifle.

·  The in-jokes and call-backs are everywhere, all the time. This simultaneously will please nostalgic fans and prove annoying.They help to poke a little fun at itself, like when Rey gets Kylo Ren to take off his mask because it makes him harder to understand. Or no, it’s a new jacket. But it’s probably just a lazy cop-out when another Death Star planet destroying thingy is revealed and they just act light-hearted about his groan-worthy development by jokingly justifying it because it’s bigger.

·    There’s a lot of good visual stuff that comes at you so rapidly it bypasses a lot of critical faculties straight to the pleasure zones. The screen sure is busy and going back to the more DIY and lived-in feel of the original series is a good, good move. Even so, I find I’m dwelling on the arbitrary logic and plot holes so large you could build another Death Star in them. It seems it’s as careless as it is satisfying to franchise fans.

·    JJ Abrams is good at revamping old franchises. The structure of action scene/change location/another action scene is greatly limited but it mostly works for this.

·     It looks the part and mostly captures the tones of the original but the thin storyline does not hold any surprises at all, so there’s a feeling of disappointment.

·           It’s fine.

·        I bet if I still had it, my collection of ‘Star Wars’ comics from when 1977 right past ‘Return of the Jedi’ would be worth a  small fortune now, if I still had it.