The Mandalorian and Grogu review

Guess what, everyone!

A new Star Wars movie is here!

Which means only one thing anymore:

CULTURE WAR!!!!

Yes, because no franchise (not even Marvel) has become more of an object for internet fandoms to whine and argue about incessantly, often for political reasons. Yes, how DARE a franchise that began as a Vietnam allegory and featured bad guys called "stormtroopers" insert anything even vaguely political into its product!

I loathed the discourse around the prequels back in the day, but at least that was mostly left to the films themselves.

The Disney Star Wars era has proven that the prequel era was not an outlier. Star Wars fans exist to bitch. They hate everything. If it came out after 1980, it is shit. And now in this era we have all the added whining from the deplorables, the ones who hold extra disdain for all things Star Wars now that there were projects fronted by women, or prominently featuring any non-straight white male 100% of the time. And when the overseer of all things Lucasfilm is also a woman, oh boy is that just unacceptable.

The last 10-plus years of Star Wars have not matched the historical acclaim of the OT or the feverish PT era, but there has been some great stuff. The Last Jedi, Rogue One, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Acolyte, and much of The Mandalorian are all great. 

The last one is now a movie, TMAG (I'm not typing that out every time), and as the first theatrical Star Wars project in 7 years (not counting re-releases) it has been burdened with the responsibility of keeping the franchise alive. 

This is stupid. It is already being trashed for not doing Skywalker saga box office numbers. This is stupid. 

TMAG is not one of the great Star Wars films. It is exactly what it looks like it is, a simple little adventure featuring a couple of popular characters, that doesn't have the stakes of the typical franchise entry, but is 2 hours of enjoyable Star Wars stuff.

Mando and Grogu are tasked with a mission. They go do the mission, get in some scrapes, battle some bad guys and monsters. It could have easily been season 4 of the show, and indeed was reconfigured from that into a movie.

I didn't have any other expectations for this. I feel like this kind of modest adventure film, which doesn't even require much knowledge of the show to follow, was what people wanted? 

I actually wish there were more things from the series. None of the show's roster of prominent supporting characters are here. No mandalorian lore. Nothing about Grogu's backstory. No cameos. Not even much of a supporting cast at all (Sigourney Weaver is the only recognizable face, although Martin Scorsese of all people voices one kooky creature).

There is some good action. Grogu gets lots of cute stuff to do, including an extended sequence where he is on his own for a while. Dug the synth-heavy score.

It's the show. If you like the show, I see no reason why you wouldn't like the movie. It's not something I would go see in the theater again. It's not going on my ten best list for the year.

It's a solid 7 out of 10. Calm down.