The Mandalorian and Grogu

If TV’s The Mandalorian dug into the creed, code, and ethos of the Mandalorian clan of bounty hunters — a helmet-wearing cadre so deadpan they make the Jedi look like party animals — the cinematic adventure The Mandalorian and Grogu serves as a reminder that George Lucas created the world of Star Wars only after being unable to secure the rights to remake the whiz-bang Flash Gordon serials. Even if you missed the show, you can still enjoy, and follow, the bump-up to the big screen.

Jon Favreau created the Disney+ version, which played like a star-hopping take on The Fugitive or Route 66, with our Mandalorian hero Din Djarin (Pablo Pascal) getting into and out of a sticky situation over the course of each episode accompanied by Grogu (unofficially also known as “Baby Yoda”), the powerful infant alien to whom the Mandalorian grew closer and more fatherly with each passing adventure. Their stories take place in a universe still reeling from the overthrow of the Empire, well before the rise of the New Order. (aka, after Return of the Jedi and before The Force Awakens.)

For the movie, Favreau seems to be taking his cues from the 007 franchise: the Mandalorian and Grogu are searching the galaxy for former Empire higher-ups pushing back against the New Republic, taking assignments from Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), who’s equal parts M and Q, tut-tutting the Mandalorian’s results as “messy, messy” when he invariably kills his prey rather than capture them for questioning. (Weaver’s signature tone of honey-dipped disappointment fits perfectly into her franchise debut.)

One of those assignments, involving Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allan White) — son of Jabba — becomes significantly more complicated and dangerous than it first appears, which cues the chasing and the fighting and deadly aliens and the thrill-ride portions of this intended summer blockbuster. (To say more than that would be to incur the wrath of spoiler-hating fans and Disney publicists.)

There’s certainly some television structure at play in the screenplay (by Favreau and fellow series vets Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor); one could argue that the movie plays like a two-episode arc writ large. (Part I focuses on the Mandalorian; Part II on Grogu.) But since The Mandalorian was a TV show with the shape and scope of feature films, it’s a natural progression for the property. There’s no shortage of Star Wars–level wow factor, from the slimy beasts to the outer-space dogfights to Ludwig Göransson’s score, which retains the majestic badassery of the TV theme but permutates into a dizzyingly eclectic collection of tones and variations over the course of the feature.

Pascal generates enough charisma that he makes the Mandalorian captivating even through what is mostly a vocal performance. (The character, like others of his clan, nearly always wears the face-occluding helmet; it’s a thing.) As for Grogu, who gets to expand beyond his sidekick role here, he’s an onscreen creation second only to Paddington Bear in his ability to zero in on the sentimental parts of the human brain. He’s utterly adorable, and it’s to Favreau’s credit that the movie doesn’t lean too hard on Grogu’s cuteness to get by.

There are Easter eggs aplenty for fans of the Star Wars saga, and The Mandalorian and Grogu plants a few possibilities for sequels and spinoff characters without being too obvious about it. For Favreau, philosophy and world-building is obviously the stuff of the TV show; now that it’s a movie, it’s time for fun and thrills.

Director: Jon Favreau
Screenwriters: Jon Favreau & Dave Filoni & Noah Kloor
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allen White
Executive producers: Karen Gilchrist, John Bartnicki, Carrie Beck
Producers: Kathleen Kennedy, Ian Bryce, Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni
Director of photography: David Klein
Production design: Andrew L. Jones, Doug Chiang
Editing: Rachel Goodlett Katz, Dylan Firshein
Music: Ludwig Göransson
Sound design: David Acord, sound designer/supervising sound editor
Production companies: Lucasfilm
In English
132 minutes