Going straight in, I’ll be brutally honest: I didn’t have particularly high expectations for The Mandalorian and Grogu. I’m not sure that anyone does, being that it’s a film-length version of a television series that, while enjoyable in general concept, has been pretty thin on the ground for narrative. Even knowing that Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor were going to help creator/director Jon Favreau unspool a healthier script wasn’t enough to assuage my doubts.
The opening didn’t do much to help the film’s case, but that was a very specific bugaboo for my sort of brain. You see, the opening sequence shows Din Djarin and Grogu taking out an Imperial garrison being run by a two-bit official who’s using his position for extortion, the next on the New Republic’s list of Empire diehards that they’ve asked their bespoke Mando to bring in. The trouble is, this specific scenario is one that was used to even more emotional effect in one of my favorite Boba Fett stories from the anthology Tales of the Empire.
I’m that kind of fan. It bugs me to no end that they keep giving Mando a lot of Fett’s greatest hits.
But the film continued, and Sigourney Weaver popped up as Colonel Ward to give Din a new ship (which looks exactly like his old ship, plus a paint job) and a new mission: Go to Nal Hutta to talk to the late Jabba’s relatives because they’re worried about their nephew, Rotta. When Din retrieves the kid and brings him home, he’ll receive intel on a major Imperial remnant leader named Janu Coin (Jonny Coyne because, yeah, they did that).
Instantly, I perked up. We’re going to see Nal Hutta on a movie screen? We’re going to go get Jabba’s kid, who hasn’t been seen since the first episode of the Clone Wars series, when he was rescued by Anakin, Obi-Wan, and a newly commissioned Ahsoka Tano? And Garazeb Orrelios (Steve Blum)—one of the Ghost crew of the beloved Rebels series—is going to be their teammate for the mission, which means he’s not just a bit part in all this?
The Mandalorian and Grogu is not a movie for any old Star Wars fan, or perhaps any old audience. It exists at a weirdo fever dream intersection of specific desires and interests: Did you like The Mandalorian? Well, this is basically one of their better seasons on film, odd though that choice may be. Did you like the Star Wars animated series, but more specifically, the weird grubby little corners those shows were more free to explore? That is exactly where this movie lives. Do you love ‘80s fantasy films full of puppets and silliness and the occasional grotesquerie? Did you, perhaps, adore… the Ewok Adventures as a child? Oh, strap in, friend, we’re going for a ride.
I make this argument endlessly, but I think it bears repeating here more than ever: Part of the reason why the animated shows are so good at creating Star Wars narrative is because they’re aimed at children. You know what children don’t care about? If something is weird or goofy or absurd or embarrassing. You can spend hours talking about Banking Clan criminal activity, and no one is complaining. You can devote reams of story to the idea of using a rare alien species to create weapons of war and make a King Kong pastiche while you’re at it. You can go on about Hutt politics, endlessly. Plenty of adult fans do not want this version of Star Wars when that is, frankly, the only reason to watch it.
Yes, I know, we can also have Andor. And I loved Andor, okay? It’s still not why I watch Star Wars. I can get plenty of realistic sci-fi resistance narratives elsewhere, and they’re far more common than what I get in this sandbox. I’m here for alien planets and robots with personalities and puppet friends with heartbreakingly beautiful faces and gnarly zombie resurrections from termite people. No one else is currently giving me that on screen, and it’s frankly baffling that we need to ask for it nearly half a century into this fictional universe’s tenure.
To wit, when Din goes to see Jabba’s relatives, there’s definitely a Hutt orgy happening in the background. (The creative team are going to claim that they’re eating, and definitely arranged it as such for plausible deniability, but I know what I’m looking at.) The Hutt palace is sporting architecture that lines up directly with Jabba’s on Tatooine, so now we know that he didn’t move into a place built by a former crime lord or work with architecture already found on the desert world. There are robot guards at the Hutt palace that are scavenged bits from nearly every kind of droid you’ve ever seen. Many of them have Separatist battle droid faces, which means that droids who figured out how to break away from organic masters are constantly upgrading themselves, and there’s a market for those parts. When Din is shown a picture of Rotta, it’s woefully out of date, and looks exactly like the baby that got rescued in The Clone Wars premiere.
Why do you need an endless array of action sequences? You could have this.
Which is one way of saying that the action in this film is nothing exciting to write home about. Co-leads Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne—the stunt performers who portray the Mandalorian while helmeted—are still doing incredible work, and the lion’s share of it; Pedro Pascal’s face is still only visible for a few precious minutes of screen time and, my qualms about the Death Watch cult rules aside, I adore the commitment to this bit. The score by Ludwig Göransson is the show’s score amped up for big screen dazzlement, and you can tell how much fun the composer is having messing around with all his previous good work.
And Grogu? The chance to showcase the range of the puppet is precisely what you should be using big movie budget bucks for. He has whole side quests that play out entirely without dialogue. (There’s so much good slapstick comedy that comes of this.) Everyone in the movie is giving the kid snacks, whether they intend to or not. He hitches a ride with a group of Anzellans—that’s Babu Frick’s species—and we learn that hyperspace-worthy ships for tiny people do exist.
Oh, and Jabba’s kid, Rotta (voiced, so wonderfully and inexplicably, by Jeremy Allen White)? He’s super jacked and but also super kind. Yet again, we come back around to the idea that being a good parent is the greatest thing you can be in Star Wars, and find out what becomes of beings who… don’t get to have that. And sure, he’s a CGI slug guy, but his plot is genuinely moving?? What am I supposed to do with that?
Martin Scorcese has an extended cameo as a CGI food seller and goes 5000% all out. There are sea serpents, and Zeb gets to fight with his bo-rifle against a hail of stormtroopers (his favorite pastime), and the New Republic are actually behaving like the good guys for a change. We get some just comeuppance against the Hutts for constantly using imprisoned wild animals to do their dirty work. A send up of the gladiator games in Thor: Ragnarok is made instantly unique when you hear Coin say that it’s going to be a Dejarik Match.
You either know what it means, or you don’t. It’s going to be fun regardless, but if you do know, you get that smart little hit of serotonin in a way that, for once, doesn’t feel cheap and unearned.
My complaints are few and far between, and they’re mostly wrapped up in the difficulty of animating certain characters in CGI and then having trouble with the mechanics of these renderings on screen. Zeb suffers the most in this; the guy is supposed to be big and also has decidedly non-human limbs, but they scale the lasat way down, likely for the purposes of the human actor stand-in. This is only truly a disappointment because the advent of CGI was meant to free us up from those sorts of restrictions. But you still can’t be too sad over a character like Zeb actually being able to enjoy a sizable part in a film like this thanks to the technology.
It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, for sure, but I’m astounded that there are any intended mega-blockbusters going this route in the year of 2026. I haven’t seen one of The Mandalorian and Grogu’s like in ages, and I’m worried that I may never see it again. If you’re missing this sort of journey from your movie-going life, I recommend that you get to a theater with a friend or child in tow as soon as possible.
It’s strange that they’d have to scale down Zeb to match the stand-in’s size, since that’s never been necessary before. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, for instance, filmed its Mr. Hyde actor in prosthetic makeup and then used digital tricks and forced perspective to enlarge him relative to the other performers in the frame, similar to what the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films did the other way around. And then there are all the Marvel movies where the Hulk has been far larger than his motion-capture performer.
Maybe it has something to do with the restrictions of filming within the confines of the volume?
Either way, I didn’t really notice whether Zeb looked that smaller, partly because a lot of the action relies on fast cuts and medium-to-close character shots. And also, I ended up seeing a 3D IMAX screening myself, and I had a hard time adjusting to the lower brightness due to those cheap goggles to really pay close attention to some of the VFX. I need to watch it again.
IMAX seemed visually less sharp even without 3D. Dolby has so far been my fav version of Mandalorian and Grogu. Majestic sound and super smooth, sharp, image. Full Fun!
In the behind-the-scenes videos I saw, Favreau talked about how they did as much of the movie as possible on practical sets and locations instead of the Volume, now that they had a feature-film budget and schedule to take advantage of.
And as I said, there’s plenty of precedent for filming mocap performers of normal size and then digitally enlarging them in the film image, like the Hulk in Marvel movies or the Na’vi in the Avatar movies. So there’s no reason the size of the performer or the available space on-set would have precluded the digital artists from making the CGI character larger.
Anyway, I found this image from the film of Din and Zeb side-by-side:
https://www.facebook.com/StarWarsWorldFans/posts/a-new-hd-still-of-din-djarin-grogu-and-zeb-from-the-mandalorian-and-grogu/1184961040333318/
It looks pretty consistent with their official respective heights of 1.8 meters and 2.1 meters. Which suggests that Zeb wasn’t shrunk after all. And 2.1 meters is about the same height as Joonas Suotamo, the new Chewbacca, so it would hardly have been impossible to find a mocap performer of that height.
Yeah. | guess I just never realized Din Djarin (whether it’s Pedro Pascal or the stunt players) was in fact that tall. But it’s easy to see in that picture. Grogu is truly tiny in comparison to him and Zeb.
One thing I was able to notice in the 3D screening is just how small Grogu and the Anzellans feel compared to the surrounding Nal Hutta vegetation.
Also, a fun easter egg. The sound of the Anzellan speeder we hear in Nevarro is the exact stock ship engine sound we hear on the classic Jetsons cartoon, and also any number of sci-fi oriented Hanna-Barbera productions.
According to IMDb, all three of Din’s performers are between 1.79 and 1.83 meters, or about 5’10”-6″. Brendan Wayne, who probably spends the most screen time in the armor, is the tallest. And presumably the helmet and boots add an inch or two on top of that.
We’ve been playing Star Wars RPGs for ages, and I went in with my game masters – didn’t expect much, but had so much fun!
Nearly everything leading up to the release of this movie left me cold, yet it is getting surprisingly positive word of mouth. I was going to wait until it got to streaming, but now I’m wondering if it would be worth finding a time to see it in the theater.
IMAX was an eye full! But Dolby is my fav version. Clear images. Awe inspiring sound.
Watched it in IMAX this morning. Absolutely worth catching with good sound and a big screen. I enjoyed the hecc out of it.
I got exactly what I was expecting out of this one. And then some. A small-scale Star Wars adventure indeed. One mostly well executed, and with some real pathos and a sense of fancy and whimsy. Very much an 80s-esque fantasy film.
If there is a difference between this one and the last two theatrical releases, I can safely say I had a wide grin throughout, which was not the case in either Solo or Rise of Skywalker. It wasn’t perfect, it could have spent a bit more time developing and tying the main story to the bigger picture (the Sigourney parts are the weakest). But I was thrilled to get a simple one-and-done outing focused on those two that didn’t try to reinvent the wheel or nuke their world. We get some truly memorable scenes involving everyone’s favorite Child, especially the later Nal Hutta parts, and the tone is overall consistent (which, again, was not the case with Solo).
I’ve just come home from seeing it, and had a great time. It’s a solid, fun Saturday afternoon popcorn movie, and one that I enjoyed.
I don’t want to spoil, but there was one bit that really made me hope this movie finds its audience. During Grogu’s ‘side quest’ referenced in the article, there’s a bit where Mando is unconscious. Kid in the row behidn me, I’m guessing about eight years old, was quietly whispering under his breath, “Wake up Mando, wake up Mando, wake up Mando.” It sounds cheesy but that kid was invested, and it did make me smile to hear it.
None of the story beats are unexpected, but they have heart. The callbacks are fun and didn’t feel intrusive. Too much of the action was in low light to hide the CGI seams, but that’s hardly unique, and that’s about the worst I’ll say about it. The price of a movie ticket and a popcorn was a good investment.
Zeb didn’t seem scaled down to me. Maybe we need to wait until more reference images come out.
In that picture CLB linked, Mando does seem to come up higher on him than clones do on Jaro Tapal, but we know from season two of Mandalorian that Din is considerably taller than Boba, and I’m reading that Zeb is two inches shorter than Jaro.
As a long time SW fan I was grinning ear to ear during the movie and having nostalgia for the days when I was young and the summer movie season was upon us. Pure fun, good action, and tender moments made this another great SW and summer flick in my book.
I’d rather have a well-constructed movie that has modest expectations and exceeds them than a bloated mess like The Rise of Skywalker. Lucas famously said Star Wars movies should be designed to appeal to 12 year olds, and from that perspective The Mandolorian and Grogu is a home run. There was a jarring tonal shift when the Grogu took the lead in the adventures, but it was worth it to see the little guy in action.
The big surprise was the sweetness of the movie. I expected the warmth of the bond between Mando and Grogu, but who expected a warm and kindly Hutt?
It was the perfect summer movie, not too demanding, and very entertaining. It appealed to me as a committed Star Wars fan who has seen all the shows, and it felt like it would be enjoyable for someone who is new to Star Wars, too.
You have a healthy and reasonable attitude to Star Wars and summer movie entertainment.
What are you doing on the internet?
I have to jump on the Zeb height thing, because I felt the same. The shot of him walking next to Din, I was like “why are they the same height?” Via some canonically released info from LucasFilm about Rebels, Zeb is supposed to be 6’11”. Kanan is 6′, and they are never ever the same height on screen in the animation, so I’d say yes, Zeb was definitely made smaller, though I’m not sure why. Only a few years have passed since the end of Rebels, he shouldn’t have shrunk *that* much in his middle-age.
I addressed this above. I measured their relative heights in the photo you’re talking about, and they’re more or less consistent with Zeb being 6’11” (2.1 m) and Din being c. 5’11” (1.8 m), their canonically given heights. Yes, Zeb’s head doesn’t look that much higher than Din’s, but his feet are also lower in the frame, and I measured from head to toe.
Thank you, Emmett! It’s a film full of fun action, tight editing, and many delightful references. Thank you for this review!
Here’s the deal: I am NOT a Star Wars fan. Watched the original trilogy a couple of times, saw “The Phantom Menace” because of the hype.. But I did grow up reading the Marvel Star Wars comics because it satisfied my sci-fantasy itch in a way the movies never did: the stories were quirky and wide-ranging , the aliens felt alien, the creatures strange and absurd. Sometimes the stories were one-shots about one person you’d never see again, and it was great. I LOVED those comics. My wife is a Star Wars fan, so I went with heryesterday for her birthday to see “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” and I was swept back to my childhood. That movie captured the creativity of those comics–the scene with the dragon-snake looked like something from Frank Frazetta or Barry Windsor-Smith. I teared up at the beauty of so many of those scenes. And I couldn’t stop smiling. I had so much fun. So yeah, I agree Emmet, this was small and on-the-fringe and weird and such a delight.