Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (Open spoilers after release)

Cafe Society
1

Starting this thread now so we have a place to discuss spoilers once it hits theaters. The official release date is Friday, but it looks like it’s actually going to start showing in theaters across the US on Thursday afternoon. I’ll stipulate that, as of midnight Pacific time on Thursday night/Friday morning, open spoilers are permitted here.

I’ve got a ticket for a 3D showing on Thursday afternoon. Anyone else?

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Just got out of the afternoon showing. Small crowd, but I guess this isn’t really an “event” movie.

Spoiler-free review: it’s a fun action movie that hits most of the usual tropes. It doesn’t really do anything new or risky, and there’s no big surprises or mysteries. The supporting cast is fun, the effects are great, and the setpieces are interesting - a good chunk of the movie is set in a Chicago-esque metropolis that turns into a film noir pastiche for a bit, while another large chunk is set on a planet that’s been part of Star Wars lore for a long time but never been depicted onscreen before. It’s definitely the most violent Star Wars movie yet, though, as usual, there’s no blood and gore to speak of. You can definitely tell they compressed what would’ve been season 4 of the show into two hours, and there are beats where you can guess where an episode would be ending and a new one starting.

Overall, it’s a solid 6 or 7 out of 10. If you enjoyed the show and want to see Din and Grogu go on another wild adventure, you’ll enjoy the movie.

I’ll share my thoughts on the plot itself tomorrow.

3

Until somebody writes a well thought out trilogy with a preconceived story arc (I’m looking at you Kathleen Kennedy and JJ Abrams with your unforgivable ‘let’s just wing it’ approach), I think a light entertaining romp through the Star Wars universe sounds great. The Mandalorian seasons were good but did we really need over 5 hours to tell that story. Condense it into 2 hours and it sounds right up my alley.

4

Alright, spoiler thoughts.

As I said, you can definitely see how they condensed what would have been a season arc into a movie. My guess is the season would’ve looked something like this:

Episode 1: The cold open fight on the ice planet
Episode 2: Getting the mission to catch Coin, getting his new Razor Crest, and meeting the twins
Episode 3: Shakari part 1 - the investigation, meeting Rotta, the bar fight, and getting captured
Episode 4: Shakari part 2 -The arena fight and the escape, ending with Rotta revealing that Janu is the Imp Mando is after
Episode 5: Capturing Janu, returning to Navarro, and getting captured by Embo
Episode 6: The pit fight with the dragon snake and escaping, ending with Mando passing out from the poison
Episode 7: Grogu protects Mando and gets him the antitode and the gun runner’s ship, closing with Mando and Grogu deciding not to run
Episode 8: The final showdown at the Twins’ palace

Things I liked:

  • The action scenes were great and the bigger budget really shows. The cold open, the arena fight against the Dejarik monsters, and the final showdown at the Twin’s palace were all excellent.
  • Grogu is actually getting to become a capable fighter himself instead of just tagging along and trying to eat everything, and he saves Mando’s life multiple times. What a good son!
  • Rotta the Hutt is a really interesting character and I hope we see more of him. Pretty much every Hutt we’ve seen up to this point has been the exact same character type as Jabba, so it’s refreshing to see a Hutt that speaks Basic, isn’t a lecherous gangster, and is actually a decent guy.
  • The entire sequence on Shakari was the best part of the movie. I spent most of it thinking how it was basically a film noir set in '40s Chicago - Mando as the incorruptible private eye trying to bring down the mob, Rotta as the fan favorite prizefighter who just needs to win One Last Match to move on to bigger things, and Janu as the mob kingpin who runs the boxing business in town and is planning to strike it rich by stacking the deck against the champion. This whole movie is very dependent on lots of classic action movie tropes, and this segment pulls it off the best. Martin Scorsese as the streetwise informant running a food cart was a nice touch. The '80s-ish synth music that gets used as the planet’s theme is one of the best instrumentals Star Wars has had in a long time.
  • The cold open takes place on an ice planet. I see what you did there, Favreau.
  • Sigourney Weaver looks GREAT for 76! I’m not sure if they CGIed her into her younger self the way they put Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher into Rogue One or if that was just old-fashioned Hollywood makeup magic, but either way it worked.
  • Babu Frik and the other Anzellan mechanics with their tiny spaceship are great.
  • The two giant combat droids guarding the Twins’ throne room moved in an interestingly Harryhausen-esque stop motion sort of way.
  • The escape from the palace just before the Republic blows it up was literally the Dangeresque “looks like we’re gonna have to JUMMMMMMMP!” bit from Homestar Runner, which made me chuckle.

Things I didn’t like or could’ve used improvement:

  • By the end of the movie, we haven’t learned anything new about Grogu’s past or his people, or the plan to resurrect Palpatine that the Empire was hunting Grogu for in the first place, and nothing has really been established or changed except that Mando has a new ship. I was expecting some kind of big reveal that never came.
  • Nal Hutta was visually impressive, but I always figured it’d be, well, more gross. Sure, it looked hot and fetid and probably smelled terrible and most of the wildlife there is actively trying to kill you all the time, but I imagined giant smokestacks spewing black smoke into the sky, chain gangs of slaves being worked to death by drone overseers, Hutts parading down the avenues in their finery while their subjects are forced to stand and cheer, that kind of stuff. Maybe they keep the slaves and heavy industry all on Nar Shaddaa.
  • Zeb, Embo, and Rotta are all Clone Wars characters that the movie just kind of expects us to be familiar with, because asking Dave Filoni to write a Star Wars project without turning it into a continuation of Clone Wars is like asking a leopard to change its spots. Rotta gets plenty of characterization, but Zeb never gets a proper introduction, and I don’t think we ever even hear Embo’s name. I’d wager that outside of hardcore Star Wars completionists, most people who see this movie won’t have watched Clone Wars.
  • Mando gets knocked out, captured, and disarmed twice, but both times his captors let him keep his armor - you know, the near-impenetrable beskar steel that’s worth a king’s ransom, can literally repel lightsaber blades, that gets passed down from parent to child for centuries with every suit being a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, forged by hand in a secret process known only to a chosen few, and is the only reason he survived either of the fights he had to fight without his weapons. Mando survives because the villains have the idiot ball.
  • The sequence with Grogu taking care of unconscious Mando went on for WAY too long and dragged the movie to a halt. It needed trimming.
  • When Mando steps into the gun runner’s ship, he just sort of has his blaster pistol back, and it’s never explained how he got it since his weapons are presumably all still back at the Hutt palace or on Embo’s ship.
  • When Mando starts using the sniper rifle to pick off droids through the throne room door, it has a bolt action. Why in the name of the Maker would a laser gun have a bolt action? That’s just silly.

Overall, like I said; it’s a fun action movie, and if you enjoyed the show you’ll be entertained, but it could’ve been more. Of the Star Wars gaiden movies, I’d say it ranks above Solo but below Rogue One.

5

I liked this as well. Although my “gangster city” vibe must be off, or maybe it’s because I’ve just never been to Chicago, but my immediate impression was more eastern or southeastern Asia. Beijing, Shanghai, or Bangkok, from the mid 20th century was the impression I got.

I think she’s just taken good care of herself while avoiding the stereotypical Hollywood plastic surgery / Botox route of trying to stay younger looking.

Agreed. Cutting out one of his trips to the fisherman would have helped.

That’s my verdict as well. It takes me back to Star Wars as it was back in the Original Trilogy days, and that’s a good thing.

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The elevated rail is what really screams Chicago to me.

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Just got back from seeing it. We loved it! Really felt like an adventure story in the Star Wars universe. Forget about grand narratives, this was a pure set piece story.

Pacing was great, with three acts. Plotting was easy to follow. Many Chekhov’s guns, with lots of pay offs. Enough explanatory asides to keep non fans along.

Character development was minimal, but enough to make emotional connections.

Felt like an Indian Jones movie, one of the good ones. Perfect summer popcorn movie, well worth seeing on the big screen.

8

I liked it. It was entertaining but the more you think about it the emptier it was. Also the acting was strangely flat all around. Everyone sounds like they are reading cue cards.

9

As I said, it’s basically just “Mando and Grogu go on another wild adventure”. It entertained me for two hours, but I don’t think it has the rewatchability of A New Hope or The Last Jedi.

10

While I liked it a lot, it wasn’t perfect. There wasn’t anything besides some really great effects that said to me THIS MUST BE ON A BIG SCREEN. At this point my wish from SW is to not hate or be disappointed, so we’re heading in the right direction. If we get movies this good every 2-3 years, that’d be great.

11

I enjoyed it a lot. I’ve had a tough couple of months, and this was the kind of escapism I needed.

Yes, it’s a souped-up TV series arc. I’m good with that.

Agreed, and the speeder chase after the arena fight reminded me of Jake and Elwood driving at high speed under the L tracks in The Blues Brothers.

Coupled with the rain and the fact it’s always dark, it gave that sequence a bit of a Blade Runner feel, too.

It’s pretty consistent with how Nal Hutta was depicted in Clone Wars, and in the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG. It’s a nasty, fetid swamp, and the only thing that I was surprised that we didn’t see, at least in the Twins’ palace, was any slaves. In those other sources, it’s been established Hutts did keep a lot of those things (factories, non-Hutts) on Nar Shaddaa and other planets which they controlled, and rarely entertained visitors on their actual homeworld.

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My thought exactly!

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Me three! (That is, I thought the exact same thing–between the aesthetic and the 80s-esque synth music.)

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Because no one else mentioned it unless I missed it, all the monsters in the Arena were the Chess pieces from Star Wars which was a bit of Fan Service I actually enjoyed. I also liked seeing Zeb from Rebels again.

Something that dragged the movie down though is you almost never felt like Mando was in danger. Even when he was captured it seemed almost like he wanted to be. Other than the Bounty Hunter who caught him, it never seemed to take him any effort to win. It’s fun to see him go ham on bad guys but not over and over again.

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Janu even calls it a “Dejarik fight” - that being the name of the holochess game R2 played with Chewie on the Falcon.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dejarik

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I’ll respectfully disagree with this.

Yes, he mowed down opposition from mooks: Stormtroopers, regular battle droids, even the Amani (the amphibian hunters which the Hutts used). But, against the bounty hunter (Embo), the dragonsnake, Rotta, and the two large battle droids outside of the Twins’ throne room, he was evenly matched, and they were all difficult fights.