‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Review: Jon Favreau’s Very Long Episode of Television

To say that Star Wars is in a weird place—or at least a weirder place than usual—would be an understatement. Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first Star Wars film to hit theaters since 2019’s abysmal The Rise of Skywalker, and Disney’s naked desperation to mine the IP for Disney+ fodder has led to jaw-dropping 13 different series in the years between them. On one hand, even for Star Wars, that’s a preposterous level of oversaturation. On the other, we should be thankful that one of those shows was Andor.

The Mandalorian was the first live-action Disney+ Star Wars show, and there’s a reason that it’s the one that’s managed to stick around for three seasons. As much lore and cultural pressure gets piled onto this franchise’s already crippled shoulders, The Mandalorian never really forgets that it’s basically Lone Wolf and Cub in space. Even at its most lore-heavy, it’s Star Wars as close to its pulpy Flash Gordon-y roots as it’s ever been. And, yes, it certainly doesn’t hurt that the wee baby Grogu is an unstoppable cultural juggernaut of cuteness.

Mandalorian and Grogu is, basically, four Mandalorian episodes wearing an IMAX trench coat. The closest the film gets to greater ideas about the Star Wars universe is its opening 15 minutes, where Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) is presented to us as the galaxy-far-far-away equivalent of a Nazi hunter in the 1950s. It’s a thrilling opener that has our beloved Mando zipping around a snowy peak with Grogu strapped to his back, executing Stormtroopers and frightened Imperial stooges on the run with extreme prejudice, climaxing with a trek down a mountain that feels like a high-tech remake of The Spy Who Loved Me.

Other examples of Mandalorian and Grogu wearing its influences on its sleeve include an opening credit sequence—a first for a Star Wars film—that tips its hat to Top Gun and an urbanized planet that feels straight out of Matt Reeves’s The Batman. The more uniquely Star Wars elements come in as Djarin is given his new mission: The Hutts have information about another Imperial in hiding but will only give up the goods if the New Republic is able to rescue Jabba the Hutt’s orphaned son, Rotta, from the aforementioned planet.

But Rotta—a familiar name only for dedicated Clone Wars fans—might have different ideas. Having grown into a yoked pit fighter one match away from retirement, Rotta—voiced by Jeremy Allen White in brashly sad Iron Claw mode—wants nothing to do with his infamous family, and is willing to drag Djarin into a world of hurt to keep it that way.

There are chases, brawls, dogfights in space, plenty of new alien weirdos to meet—including a delightfully manic turn by Martin Scorsese as a four-armed food truck vendor—and a few tense scrapes with death. It is, in short, just a straightforward Star Wars story, lowering the bar of entry to literally anyone who likes high adventure, sci-fi, and cute little animal shenanigans.

To the extent that this is all anyone needs from a Saturday afternoon, Mandalorian and Grogu is a winner. There’s just so very little else going on between its ears. The most ambitious sequence in the film is an almost dialogue-less sequence that has Grogu tending to an injured Djarin all on his own, communing with nature, scavenging food, and hiding from bounty hunters, and even that feels rather pointedly like a specific stretch of The Last of Us.

With Mandalorian and Grogu, Favreau has crafted the cinematic equivalent of the well-made cheeseburger at the climax of The Menu. The skill required to deliver such a gratifying lack of complication is underappreciated in our media landscape, which is praise with faint damning. It’s the film Star Wars needed, and the one it deserves.