The Star Wars Universe under Disney has taken quite a beating over the last few years for its lack of interesting storylines and uninspired character choices. Largely, the property has lived on in the era of streaming. Shows like Andor and The Clone Wars were there to feed long-term fans with content from a galaxy far far away. However, the loss of a big screen feature not since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker is telling. That being said, that is not unlike most franchises. A lull in quality followed with a dormant period. The Bond franchise is a recent one that comes to mind that is not going through its own, even though I am very unsure of what Amazon can bring to the table. But going back to the drawing board, the house of mouse is looking to the little television show that could to pick up the pieces and bring us back up to hyper speed.
The Mandalorian and Grogu picks up where we left off with the helmeted one and his little green charge whisking across space in search of their next conquest. No opening crawl, just a simple two sentence text on screen to catch us up. They are on a mission to get a security detail working with remnants of the Empire. Dropped right into the action, Jon Favreau sets right to bringing the gunslinger energy that made the original show such a hit. No grand plot line or lineage to follow, Mando and Baby Yoda bringing in wanted scoundrels for the New Republic. Now we have Sigourney Weaver as Ward, a colonel who is given the task to dole out assignments to the hunter to capture known associates of the flailing Dark Side.
Pedro Pascal’s dulcet tones have fit this character so well, a mix of rogue samurai and Wild West desperado that it feels shocking that he wasn’t a part of the original trilogy. I know, he is an offshoot of Boba Fett. But what Favreau and writer Dave Filoni create feels more like a remix than a pure carbon copy. One of the main complaints of JJ Abrams sequels were that this relied on too much fan service, tying so many of the main families to the new stories. It essentially rendered the films so hermetic that no casual fan could buy the conceit. Here, the team references Jabba from Return of the Jedi, but these are new characters with different motivations. All the players, including Mando, are complicated by the warring factions that each must pledge allegiance to, and legacies to be either upheld or discarded. Jeremy Allen White as his son Rotta prefers the latter and we find his reasons quite compelling for his decision to leave crime behind.
His inclusion among the usual scum and villainy is a breath of fresh air, proof that nurture doesn’t constitute a predictable path.
Mando and Grogu flit from one place to the next to find Rotta for his family, in order to gain useful information about the old Empire. But as all these stories go, nothing is what it seems. Along the way a new collection of fun voice-acting cameos come up such as Martin Scorsese as a stall vendor and Stephen McKinley Henderson as a wise fisherman. We meet him fishing during a sequence that feels like a partial silent movie as we just follow Grogu trying to save his friend. Favreau maintains a wonderful pace, switching from this to high octane action with ease.
In the end, I am not sure if this was the message he intended, but it was the one I got out of it. In a world where everything is so black and white, a little grey goes a long way. Sometimes Hutts can be kind, sometimes bounty hunters can be the enemy. All we can hope for is that we can trust each other and see that we are fighting for a just cause. In times like these, that is all we can ask for. As a popcorn movie, I couldn’t ask for a more entertaining time. To quote a former Star Wars actor Donald Glover, it just feels like summer.
