My Thoughts on "The Mandalorian and Grogu" AKA "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu"
I just got out of seeing The Mandalorian and Grogu AKA Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. I really didn’t expect to see this movie, especially not in theaters, but I guess I should’ve because today’s Father’s Day, and my dad likes Star Wars, and he’s been wanting to see this movie since it came out last month in May. So of course, to celebrate Father’s Day, we took him to see this movie. It’s his day, so he got to decide what to do where to go. I got to see The Furious (2025), so it’s okay. I was actually going to suggest we see The Furious (2025) if The Mandalorian and Grogu wasn’t still playing in theaters by the time Father’s Day came along. I wouldn’t have minded seeing it again, it’s that badass, and I want it to be successful. I don’t want it to be ignored or overlooked, it’s too good for that. So I would’ve thrown more of my money 💵 to see it and add to the total gross. But, luckily for my dad, this movie was still playing today on Father’s Day, and he got to finally see the movie he’s been wanting to see all years. That’s really what all of this was about at the end of day. Giving my dad a fun day. And it was fun, we all had a good time.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie. It’s the first Star Wars movie since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and the first theatrically released Star Wars movie since The Rise of Skywalker. And The Rise of Skywalker came out in 2019, and it’s 2026 now, so it’s been over 7 years. Needless to say, Disney’s plan to release a new Star Wars movie every year or every two years like with Marvel backfired. And a lot of that has to do with the reception of the sequels, from the fans, the critics, and even general audiences. People liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens, they did. I know people now like to pretend that they didn’t like it, but they did. I mean, it’s okay if you don’t like it anymore now, but don’t pretend that you never liked it at all because you know deep down you know it’s true. They even liked Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first Star Wars spinoff movie and the first non-Skywalker Saga Star Wars movie, and many of them still like it. Rogue One is probably the one Disney Star Wars movie that people still aren’t afraid to admit they liked. Which is funny because I really wasn’t a fan of it myself. But that could be because I was already on the Disney Star Wars hate train by the time Rogue One came out. But, it was really the second sequel movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi that things started to go downhill. Now, some people do genuinely like The Last Jedi. There’s whole dedicated group of fans who are willing to defend The Last Jedi from the overwhelming number of haters. But the majority of people did not like it.
The mixed reception to The Last Jedi probably hurt the box office of Solo: A Star Wars Story, the second spinoff movie and technically the fifth prequel film since both it and Rogue One are set after the prequel trilogy and before the original trilogy. And Solo tells the origin story of Han Solo, one of the key characters of the original trilogy, and the father of Ben Solo AKA Kylo Ren, one of the key characters of the sequel trilogy. Plus, Solo features a prequel character…Darth Maul at the very end of the movie. Then, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker emerged in 2019 after some behind-the-scenes shenanigans and a change of director and writer, and was received even worse than The Last Jedi. The people who liked The Last Jedi hated The Rise of Skywalker, and the people who hated The Last Jedi hated The Rise of Skywalker just about the same. It united everybody, in possibly the worst way imaginable. The Rise of Skywalker is so hated that a lot of fans just want to pretend that it didn’t even happen. It’s one of those movies in a franchise that the fandom just hates so much that they like to pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s just like with Pacific Rim: Uprising and Independence Day: Resurgence.
Which is funny because a lot of people compared the first Pacific Rim to the first Independence Day, especially the ending, where they send Gipsy Danger down the portal to the Anteverse and blow up the Precursors 💥 with its internal nuclear reactor ☢️ which was converted into a nuclear weapon ☢️. Which is sort similar to the ending of Independence Day where Russell blows up that one Harvester City Destroyer ship 💥 hovering over Area 51 and then the part where Steven and David launch a nuke ☢️ at the control room in the Harvester Mothership and blow up the Mothership 💥. I don’t do that, I think it’s a cop out and it’s a denial of reality. It’s better to acknowledge an installment of a franchise that you don’t like than pretend it doesn’t exist. The fact that I refer to the aliens 👽 from the Independence Day movies as the “Harvesters” shows that I’m acknowledging Resurgence, since that’s where the aliens 👽 are named. They’re never named in the first movie, they’re just referred to as the “aliens 👽.” But it's kind of hard to forgot or pretend The Rise of Skywalker doesn't exist when the "Somehow Palpatine returned" line became a meme, and to this day, everyone still keeps making "Somehow Palpatine returned" jokes.
BTW, did you know that The Rise of Skywalker is currently considered the most expensive movie ever made? It had a gross budget of $593.7 million 💵 and a net budget of $490.2 million 💵. It’s crazy that a single movie costed that much 🤯. I don’t know how the budget of that movie ballooned to that size. I mean, I fully understand that a space opera movie cost a lot of money 💵 to make. You need a big budget to do a space opera movie and do it right. But, $593.7 million 💵, $490.2 million 💵? That’s way too much, there is no justifiable reason for it to cost that much. Probably because of those aforementioned behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Those can add to a movie’s budget, especially if there’s reshoots involved. Under normal circumstances The Rise of Skywalker probably wouldn’t have costed $593.7 million 💵 or $490.2 million 💵. But it was not made under normal circumstances, since there was a lot of chaos going on at Lucasfilm around the time that movie was being made. They knew people didn’t like The Last Jedi, they knew it was divisive movie, and they tried desperately to course correct, especially since they didn’t have a plan for the trilogy going into it, and just made it up as it went along. That’s really why the sequel trilogy turned out the way it did, they didn’t have a plan. They tried to make a movie that would please everybody. But, as always in situations like this, they ended up pleasing no one. And it was really the fallout from that movie why it took so long for another Star Wars movies to get made.
And that wasn’t due to a lack of trying since Disney and Lucasfilm have been trying to get another Star Wars movie off the ground for years, and nothing stuck except for this movie and the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter (2027), which shares a name with a 2001 Star Wars game that was tied into Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Not directly since Star Wars: Starfighter (2001) came out 2 years after The Phantom Menace, and was not made to promote that movie. It wasn’t apart of The Phantom Menace’s marketing. But, the story of Star Wars: Starfighter (2001) is set before and during the events of The Phantom Menace, and is very much about the same conflict, the Trade Federation’s invasion and occupation of Naboo. So it is very much connected. It also had a sequel, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, which was set before and during the second prequel film, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. So it was more of a direct tie-in to that movie than the first Starfighter game was to The Phantom Menace. But, the 2027 Star Wars: Starfighter movie stars Ryan Gosling, and was directed by a guy ♂︎ named Shawn Levy, who directed such movies as Big Fat Liar, Just Married 💍, Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Pink Panther (2006), and Free Guy ♂︎. Not the most promising resume, but we’ll see. It’s set after The Rise of Skywalker, 5 years after The Rise of Skywalker to be exact. Again, we’ll see, we’ll see what they came up with. They really haven’t shown anything post-sequel trilogy, or post-sequel era.
All spinoffs and other ancillary material has either been set before the original trilogy or after. In fact, they haven’t seen really shown anything in the prequel era or before, except for The Acolyte, which also had a mixed reception, with most of the fans seeming to hate it, and some of the critics liking. Some, but far from all. In fact, they didn’t show anything that actually took place in the sequel era, except for maybe Star Wars: Resistance, which was supposed to be a followup to Star Wars: Rebels but failed miserably. Being forgotten as soon as it was announced. 2027 is also the 25th anniversary of Attack of the Clones, which is my favorite prequel film and the one I have the most nostalgia for, so you definitely know I’m going to celebrate that. They better do a theatrical re-release for that movie just like they did The Phantom Menace back in 2024, but they probably won’t because even amongst the prequels, Attack of the Clones is the least liked.
So then we come to this movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu AKA Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. For the sake of brevity, I will referring to the movie as just The Mandalorian and Grogu from here on out. That is what it’s called in the actual movie, in the opening credits, and it’s what everyone refers to it as. No one actually calls it Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, they just call it The Mandalorian and Grogu. And honestly, it sounds a lot better. It’s a lot cleaner. So that is what I will call it for the remainder of this review. This is just going to be a quick review since it’s on short notice and I don’t have a ton to say about this movie. Not because I didn’t like it, I did, but I just don’t have a lot of substance to say about it. There are movies you watch, and you like them, but you don’t have a ton to say about them despite how much you like them. This is one of those movies for me.
Full transparency, I never watched The Mandalorian. Not even the popular seasons that people actually liked, I never watched it. I just didn’t have enough interest to actually watch it. So knowing that this movie was going to set after Season 3 and was going to be a continuation of the series, I wasn’t sure if I was going to understand what was going on. The reviews I had seen weren’t exactly encouraging. Like nearly every film and streaming series in the Disney era, except for Rogue One and Andor (which were both made by a lot of the same people, namely Tony Gilroy, which probably explains these were only two pieces of Star Wars media under media to gain pretty much universal praise from critics, fans, and regular streaming viewers alike), this movie received mixed reviews. With a lot of people criticizing the plot and the visuals (they criticized the CGI), and questioning whether or not a Mandalorian movie was even necessary.
The big talking point amongst critics regarding this movie was: why should we pay for something that we can get on TV for free? Pretty much echoing the sentiment of Homer Simpson in The Simpsons Movie, which is ironically getting a sequel in 2027, and the Simpsons franchise as a whole is also owned by Disney. So, they got three major releases next year, both in the live action realm and animation realm, since they also got Ice Age: Boiling Point 🧊🥵 coming out in February next year, which will be the sixth Ice Age 🧊 movie after Ice Age: Collision Course 🧊☄️, which came out in 2016, 10 years ago. Next year when Boiling Point 🥵 comes out, it will have been 11 years. A really long time. But it’s not made by Blue Sky Studios as Disney forced them to close down in 2021, 5 years ago, so I really have no interest 😒. Disney literally told them, “we want to make more Ice Age 🧊 movies, we just don’t want you to make them. We want to make them ourselves. You are no longer necessary. We got the IP out of you, now we’re shutting down.”
It's funny that these critics all complained about how they made a Mandalorian movie and that you have to pay with real money 💵 to see it when they could easily watch the Mandalorian series for free, when a lot of them watch movies for free anyway. They don't have to pay a single cent when they go to see these movies at these critic screenings. So either way they're watching the movie for free essentially, so who are they to complain? You might say that they're just looking out for the average consumer, but most of these critics don't actually give a shit about the average consumer. In fact often times, they look down on the average consumer because they see their taste in movies as inferior to theirs. Even the ones that don't necessarily look down on the average consumer, the average moviegoer, still project themselves onto the average consumer/moviegoer and assume that their experience is comparable to theirs, when its not. Professional critics don't have to pay to see movies, the average consumer/moviegoer does, and they have to pay an exorbitant amount of money 💵 to see a movie. Mostly because of the concessions, which is where the theaters make most of their movies. They don't make money 💵 from ticket sales, they make it from concession sales.
That's why they all jacked up the prices on concessions, and you spend exorbitant amounts of money 💵 on popcorn 🍿 and drinks 🥤. I mean, I like popcorn 🍿 as much as the next guy ♂︎, except for maybe my dad (he hates popcorn 🍿), but it is absurd how much they charge for popcorn 🍿 at the movie theater. You'd think that if they lowered their prices, they'd make more money 💵, but that's not how it works. If they lowered their prices, and if they lowered them too much, they'd be operating a loss, and they wouldn't be turning a profits. So, the way the economy works, the way businesses, especially movie theaters, make money 💵, they have to increase their prices so that they can stay afloat. Speaking purely for myself, that's the price I'm willing to pay to help keep movie theaters and keeping bullshit streaming companies like Netflix from shutting them down. Do you hear that apparently Netflix is trying to buy Lionsgate after their attempt to buy Warner Bros. failed? I don't know if that's true, but it's a rumor that's floating around, and I saw it after I saw a Community Post on my YouTube home page from a channel that I'm not even subscribed to (figure that one out) saying that Netflix making a bid to buy Lionsgate. If that's true then that's bullshit 😤!
I don't want Netflix owning any of these other studios, in fact I don't want any of these studios buying each other out. It's getting ridiculous. Monopolies are bad in any form. If the FTC were run by people who actually gave a shit about antitrust and consumer protection, none of this would be happening. Paramount Skydance wouldn't be on the verge of buying Warner Bros., and Netflix would be able to make a bid to buy Lionsgate after their attempt to buy Warner Bros. and monopolize failed. In fact, Disney would've never been able to buy 21st Century Fox (the company that owned 20th Century Fox and all of its properties) if we had an FTC with teeth and wasn't afraid to stand up to corporations and billionaires and tell them "no." This is why we need another Democratic administration, and more progressive one at that, so the FTC can be reformed and finally start doing its job again, and prevent these companies from monopolizing, or even break up already existing monopolies that the FTC under previous administrations allowed to grow. I'm looking at you Google 🫵.
But really, Netflix trying to buy Lionsgate, if that's true, then it's yet another attempt by the leadership of that company to try to kill the movie theater going experience. Because the people who currently run Netflix don't believe in the theater going experience, they think it's unnecessary and has no value. They're wrong, dead wrong, but that's what they believe. So, they're going to try buy out any studio that still releases movies theatrically, and make it so that no movie is released theatrically anymore. Even though Netflix has had to release a few movies theatrically because they were so popular and simply having them on streaming wasn't enough. Case in point, KPop Demon Hunters. That movie was so big, it was so popular last year that Netflix was forced to give it a theatrical release (albeit a limited one) just to meet the demand. Or the filmmakers behind the movies actively campaigned for them to get released theatrically. Case in point, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 🧅🗡️, from Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi. So no, I do not want Netflix owning Lionsgate. I am 100% against it 😠.
But since I mentioned Lionsgate, I guess this is a better time as any to mention that when I saw this movie in the theater, I saw the trailer to the upcoming Jason Statham action movie, Mutiny (2026). It comes out on August 21st, and it's basically about this guy ♂︎ who used to work in the special forces and in the London police force, but now works in private security. He knew this Thai billionaire 🇹🇭 who was his best friend, until his Thai billionaire friend 🇹🇭 was murdered and he was framed for it. So he's basically trying to track down his best friend's killers and clear his name. Which leads him to this cargo ship, that he soon finds out is involved in an international human trafficking operation and is carrying human trafficking victims inside of the shipping containers. So, it becomes a story about him trying to free these human trafficking victims and also find his best friend's killers, who are probably the same people behind this human trafficking operation. It looks like a good movie.
I already saw the trailer to the movie before I saw in the theater in front of this movie, but I didn't realize that it was from the same director as the movie, Plane ✈️🇵🇭, the 2023 action thriller movie starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter, about a commercial airliner ✈️ that crash lands in the Philippines 🇵🇭, and the pilot must team up with a convict who was also being transported on the plane ✈️ to stop a bunch of Islamic terrorists ☪️ from taking the passengers and flight attendants hostage, holding them for ransom, and then ultimately killing them. It's a pretty good movie. I never wrote a full dedicated review for it, but I write a review of it in my 2023 New Year's Eve Recap if you want to read it. It's the very first one. But that just gave me more confidence that this movie will be good. Since I missed Shelter (2026), this will give me the chance to watch another new Jason Statham movie in the same year. Ever since Jason Statham started doing yearly releases, starting with The Beekeeper 🐝 in 2024, this is the first time he's released two movies in a single year. I wonder he'll do anymore, if this is the first time he's have two movies come out in a single year.
I still don't know when The Beekeeper 2 🐝 is coming out. I'm assuming 2027, but I really can't say since we haven't really heard anything about it since it was announced in 2025 and Timo Tjahjanto was confirmed as the director, taking over from David Ayer, who directed the first one. If you don't know know who Timo Tjahjanto is, he's the director of The Night Comes for Us (which I've reviewed here on the blog), the L is for Libido short in The ABCs of Death, the Safe Haven short in V/H/S/2 📼 which he co-directed with Gareth Evans, the director of the Raid movies, Merantau, and Havoc (2025), the Subject short in V/H/S/94 📼, and Nobody 2. So this will be the second time that he's a directed a sequel to an American action movie 🇺🇸 despite being Indonesian 🇮🇩. His work on Nobody 2 is probably what landed him the job as director on The Beekeeper 2 🐝.
Not only that, but a lot of the same people questioning whether or not a Mandalorian movie was necessary in the first place were probably asking for one when the show was at the peak of its popularity. When it was still a critic darling and a fan favorite. Because I remember when The Mandalorian first started, and was well liked by pretty much everyone, people were asking for a Mandalorian movie. Or even ironically, they were asking why it wasn't a movie instead of a streaming show. It was everything people wanted from a Boba Fett movie and didn't get from the Boba Fett show, The Book of Boba Fett. Most of these calls for Mandalorian movie came from the popularity of the Mandalorian character himself, Din Djarin. He's such a badass. He's everything people wanted Boba Fett to be, but wasn't. Of course, they'd want a full movie of him instead of just a series on Disney+. Though personally, speaking for myself, I wasn't really much of a fan of Boba Fett. I always kind of felt he was overrated, and I preferred his father, Jango Fett, who was first introduced in Attack of the Clones. Another big reason why that movie's my favorite prequel film.
The video tie-in to Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter was pretty much everything people would want in a Boba Fett game, only we were getting a much more interesting story, and we were playing as the OG Fett, the real Fett. Boba was just a clone, living in his dad's shadow. And really, the fans just wanted to see anything Mandalorian related, especially a movie. Just like how a lot of them were wanting a movie or show about Obi-Wan Kenobi, or a show or movie or game about Darth Maul. Both of which, they would end up getting...to mixed results. The Darth Maul show was received a lot better than the Obi-Wan Kenobi show. Which is funny because Darth Maul and Obi-Wan are rivals. Maul hates Obi-Wan, and everything he does post-Phantom Menace is driven by his hatred for Obi-Wan. They even say that it was his hatred for Obi-Wan that kept him alive. That’s why he didn’t die after Obi-Wan sliced him in half with Qui-Gon’s lightsaber and he fell down that shaft in The Phantom Menace. So I guess Maul won that round, even though my dad actually likes Obi-Wan Kenobi (the show), despite the overwhelming criticism for it on the Internet 🛜. And that's really because they think the Mandalorians are so cool. So, I really don't want to hear it from any of those people, since a lot of them are hypocrites, who were saying the exact opposite when this show first came out and was still beloved.
I think what happened was that they were going to make a fourth season to The Mandalorian, but Disney forced to them to make a movie instead because they were desperate to have any new Star Wars movies out in theaters again after the 7 year long drought. Star Wars: Starfighter (2027) was going to come out for another year, and the other Star Wars film projects are still uncertain, so they decided to make a Mandalorian movie to make up for him. To hold people over until the other Star Wars movies can come out. If any of them come out. I mean, for sure Starfighter (2027) will come out, it's already in production, but the other ones 😬? I really don't know. And this movie ended up becoming the lowest grossing live action Star Wars movie ever made so far, beating Solo by a significant margin. So far, this movie has only managed to gross $322.2 million 💵 worldwide against a budget of $165 million 💵. Which isn't bad, it's not technically a bomb 💣 like so many people predicted that it would be, but it far from the heights that this franchise has reached in the past. They're no longer making billions of dollars 💵 per movie, and I think Disney needs to stop expecting that if they are to move forward and make more Star Wars movies in the future.
The Skywalker Saga is over, and unless they want to completely retcon the sequels and completely start over with a clean slate, all they have at this point are spinoff movies. And spinoff movies usually don't make as much money 💵 as mainline movies. Sure, Rogue One made a billion dollars 💵, but it was actually a movie people genuinely liked, and it came right off the heels of The Force Awakens. It was the followup to The Force Awakens, even though it's set decades before. Star Wars fever was still in high swing, we were still in the honeymoon period for Disney Star Wars. Star Wars had just come back, and people were just happy to have new Star Wars movies again. Sure, the magic did end up fading over time, the novelty having new Star Wars, any new Star Wars had worn off, and it is all Disney and Lucasfilm's fault, but in that short period of 2015-2016, it was still there. That was possibly the only time that a Star Wars spinoff movie could make a billion dollars 💵. Sure, they might make a Star Wars movie that ends up being a huge hit, and does make a billion dollars 💵 or close to it, but if they keep trying to engineer these movies to be billion dollar hit 💵, it's not going to work.
To be fair, I don't think Disney, or anyone involved in this movie expected this to make a billion dollars 💵, but they probably expected it to do a lot better than $322.2 million 💵. But, despite that underwhelming box office take, my theater when I saw this was completely packed. It had completely sold out. My family and I could barely find seats, and we ended up spread apart. Part of that is due to how confusing Regal's reserve seating system is. I mistook the wheelchair seating 🦼 as regular seats, and we had to correct it and get regular seats, and ended up seating far apart from each other. My dad ended up sitting close to the seat, having to look up, but my grandma switched seats with him because she knew he wanted to watch the movie, and it was his day since it was Father's Day, so she needed up in the bad seat. I still got a pretty good seat all things considered. I sat in the very similar spot that I saw The Furious (2025) in, though it obviously wasn't the same auditorium. So clearly, there is an audience for this movie that's willing to show up, even if that's not reflected in the numbers. Maybe it's because it was Father's Day and everyone had the same idea and wanted something to do on Father's Day. Maybe that's why it was so packed.
But I had fun, I had a good time. I liked the movie a lot more than I expected to. That's what me and my grandma were saying, we liked the movie a lot more than were expecting to. It's not because I'm a Star Wars fan, I am. It's just that I'm more into the prequels and the prequel era than really anything else, except for maybe the Old Republic stuff, the Knights of the Old Republic games and the Old Republic game by Bioware, but I've never played those games. But I have seen the trailers, the 3D animated motion capture trailers for Star Wars: The Old Republic, as well as those History of the Old Republic videos which were released prior to the game's release and existed to promote the game, and then were compiled into one video by one dedicated fan, and that they're amazing. The Old Republic games have amazing stories, and they take place in such a cool and unique era of Star Wars much further in the past than The Phantom Menace.
Sure, Disney has an equivalent to the Knights of the Old Republic and Old Republic era, the High Republic era, which is when The Acolyte takes place, but it's no where near as cool. They'll never top those 3D animated trailers for The Old Republic, no one can, except for the team that made them. By the far, if you watch that lore video I just posted a link 🔗 to in the previous paragraph, before you ask, yes, that is Lance Hendrikson narrating. The fact that they got him to narrate those lore dump videos makes them even better. It gives them more gravitas than they would've had otherwise. As for my grandma, she doesn't hate or dislike Star Wars necessarily, she's just not as into it as my dad. She thought she was going to get bored and fall asleep 😴 while watching this movie, but to her surprise it kept her attention. And mine for that matter. I swear, a lot of these critics who are a Star Wars fans, and even some of these Star Wars fans online, are impossible to please. You might as well not even try. Don't try to please them, they'll never be pleased, please the general audiences, you'll be set.
I knew what the plot of this movie was going to be going in because I saw a couple of the reviews and I read the Wikipedia page, but I wasn't sure how much of my enjoyment of the movie was going to depend on my knowledge of the series and the previous season in particular. The one that no body seems to like, and where people say the show completely fell off. But, I was surprised at how much of this I was able to understand. You really don't need to have watched the show at all to understand anything that happens in this movie, since it tells you everything you need to know about the characters and the status quo in which it takes place in. Giving them a badass introduction, where they're taking down some Imperial scum. Like, if you needed any convincing that Din Djarin was a badass, that opening scene was enough to convince you. Like the show itself, this movie is set after the original trilogy and before the sequel trilogy, and Din Djarin AKA the Mandalorian or "Mando" and his companion/adopted son, Grogu AKA Baby Yoda are working for the New Republic, the government that was set up after the Empire was defeated and overthrown by the Rebellion, and they basically go around the galaxy catching various Imperial war criminals. Holdouts, some of whom are established their own little fiefdoms, trying to preserve the Empire, and most importantly their own power, in some way. Others have turned to organized crimes, as a lot of people who worked for the government or military of fallen empires do.
When Nazi Germany fell, a lot of the high ranking government officials and military officers who didn't get captured by the Allies or go into hiding turned to organized crime, and then the Soviet Union ☭ collapsed, a lot of people who worked in the government or military who didn't just become oligarchs, turned to organized crime. And this is often used as a backstory for Russian characters 🇷🇺 in stories, especially Russian gangsters 🇷🇺, that they used to work for the Soviet government or military ☭ until it collapsed and they turned to organized crime and became gangsters. That's the backstory for Balalaika, the main Russian mob boss 🇷🇺 in the manga/anime Black Lagoon, who runs her own criminal organization outside of the fictional Southeast Asian city of Roanapur, called Hotel Moscow. Not only did she serve in the Soviet military ☭ but she was a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War 🇦🇫☭, one of the contributing factors of the Soviet Union ☭'s collapse. So, it makes sense that a lot of the Imperial holdouts turned to organized crime after the Empire fell.
Which brings me to the main plot of the movie. The main plot is that Din Djarin and Grogu are set on a mission by the New Republic, specifically by their commanding officer or I guess employer, Ward (played by Sigourney Weaver), to rescue Jabba the Hutt's son, Rotta the Hutt from a crime lord who's holding him prisoner on a moon called Shakari, and then return him to Jabba the Hutt's twin siblings on Nal Hutta, the home world of the Hutts. The reason why the New Republic is sending them on a mission to rescue a Hutt is that the Twins promised to give them information about the whereabouts of an Imperial target they're looking for called Commander Coin in exchange for bringing Rotta to them. Since, they don't even know what he looks like, or if he's even still alive. As soon as they said that, I predicted that the crime lord that's holding Rotta prisoner would actually be Commander Coin, and I was right. Janu is Commander Coin. I 100% called that, and I don't particularly pride myself on being an Internet sleuth 🛜 or anything. Most people could've seen that twist coming from a mile away.
But, despite the obvious twist, I still liked the story. Seeing this makes me think about what could've been with the sequel trilogy. It could've been about them hunting Imperial holdouts, until a new threat emerges that has nothing to do with the Empire at all. Or maybe, given what the First Order was, they could've explained that the First Order was formed out of Imperial remnants, and because of that they don't control all of the galaxy. They just control parts of it, like maybe the Outer Rim or Mid Rim, or maybe just the Outer Rim and parts of the Mid Rim. But, it doesn't seem that's what they're going with, or what they're suggesting. But, it would've been I would've done if I was writing the sequels, or if I was on the writing team. I think it would've been interesting if the main antagonists of the sequels was a cult, like a space cult of some kind. Like, we could've had the Star Wars take on the Necromongers from The Chronicles of Riddick. They could've revealed that this cult was secretly being led by a Dark Side Force user, perhaps as another attempt by the Sith to control the galaxy. If they couldn't control it through politics, or even through organized crime, they could control through religion.
I also liked Shakari, I thought it was a cool location. It gave me more of those cyberpunk vibes I was missing from the prequels. The music was pretty good too. Ludwig Göransson did a good job. It was very much unlike Star Wars. But I think for the spinoff movies, it doesn't all have to be John Williams music or sound like John Williams. I also feel like that bar fight inside of Janu/Commander Coin's bar with the birdcages was heavily inspired by the opening scene of Hard Boiled, the 1992 Hong Kong action movie 🇭🇰 directed by John Woo and starring Chow Yun-fat, which also involved a shootout in a bar with birdcages in it. Only it was more of a teahouse in Hard Boiled as opposed to a bar like in this movie. I wasn't expecting to see Martin Scorsese in this. When I saw his name in the credits, I was like, "Martin Scorsese? They got Martin Scorsese to be in a Star Wars movie? The guy complains about Marvel, but is willing to be in a Star Wars movie even though they’re owned by the same company." He doesn't have a big role, he's pretty much just a cameo, and he's not playing a live action character.
He's playing a CG character and it's just a voice role for him. He plays this four-armed monkey-looking alien food vendor 👽🐒 named Hugo Durant who Din Djarin goes to for information about Janu. Once I heard him speak, I instantly knew that it was him. No one could mistake that voice. Like if you've heard Martin Scorsese talk, if you've heard his voice, you'll be able to instantly recognize whenever you hear it in a movie. It makes you wish that he did more acting work, or at least more voice work. Besides, the only other voice role I knew he did was Sykes in Shark Tale 🦈, that was 11 years ago now since that movie came out in 2005. But yeah, it's Martin Scorsese cashing quite possibly the easiest paycheck of his career. Both directorial and acting.
And Dave Filoni and Doug Chiang both make cameos in the movie as New Republic military service members. Dave Filoni plays an X-Wing pilot and Doug Chiang plays a lieutenant named Lieutenant Blick. Though I gotta be honest with you, I really didn't noticed Doug Chiang at all in this movie when I saw it. And I know what he looks like because I've seen the behind-the-scenes material on the prequels, and I've seen the panels and interviews he's done in the years since. But, I was instantly able to recognize Dave Filoni when I saw him. You can totally tell that this was co-written and co-produced by Dave Filoni. His fingerprints are all over this movie. Especially he included the bounty hunter, Embo, a character that was first introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a show that Dave Filoni was heavily involved in on the creative side (pretty much acting as the showrunner and head writer), and a character that he personally voiced. Though, Embo doesn't talk at all in this movie. He's pretty much a silent character throughout. Saved Dave Filoni from doing any voice work. But it was still cool to see him again, and seeing him in the trailer was probably the only reason why I was initially intrigued to watch this movie. Since he has such a cool design and such a cool voice, though we don't get to hear that awesome voice in this movie. His species must have long life spans because he'd be an old man ♂︎ by the time this movie takes place since he was active during the prequel era, and this is the post-original trilogy era.
I even thought the CGI was pretty good. Pretty much every critic who reviewed this movie said that the CGI was bad, but it wasn't. It was actually pretty decent. It's what you want in a movie that cost $165 million 💵 to make. I actually thought the puppetry was the weakest link in this movie, I thought the puppet effects were kind of weak. I mean, I get it, they want to keep Star Wars somewhat practical since all those original trilogy fans complained about the prequels having too much CGI, even though those movies still used a lot of practical effects, especially The Phantom Menace, which was the most notably practical out of all the prequels. But make no mistake, Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith still used a lot of practical effects too. It wasn't all CGI like some people on the Internet 🛜 would have you believe. The Disney Star Wars movies use a lot more CGI, even though they brag about using practical effects and use that in their marketing. But really, they use way more CGI than the prequels ever did. But the puppet effects in this really didn't look that good, at least to me. They so obviously looked like puppets, and they had very limited movement because they were puppets.
Which is a problem since one of the two protagonists of this movie, the second title character, Grogu is portrayed by a puppet the entire time. Of the characters who are puppets in this, Grogu does look the best, and that whole section where he has to look after Din Djarin, who's in a coma, in the jungles of Nal Hutta, was the part my audience responded to the most. Especially the part where he's trying to fit in that mud hut he made, that scene got the most laughs and chuckles 😄 out of anything in this movie. I even liked Rotta the Hutt. I wasn't sure what I was going to think of his character, since the trailer didn't give us much to go off of, but I liked him. He's probably the only genuinely good Hutt. The only Hutt that you can say is a good person, or a good alien 👽 I guess. Maybe a bit naïve and misguided, but still a good person. He's trying to escape his father's shadow, and he doesn't want to be anything like his father and he doesn't want to be compared to him, I can respect that. Especially when your father was Jabba the Hutt, the baddest gangster in the galaxy. He was probably just as bad as the Empire, especially since he worked with the Empire, or at least, he tolerated the Empire and the Empire tolerated him and allowed him to continue conducting his criminal enterprise when they fully had the power to stop him whenever they pleased.
He doesn't want to be a gangster like his dad, and he wants to live a peaceful life, I can also respect that. He ultimately chooses to work for the New Republic, especially after he learns that his aunt and uncle, the Twins were working for the Imperial holdouts, or they were collaborating with them, feeding information to both them and the New Republic, and playing both sides against each other. He knows that he comes from a pretty despicable family, and he wants to forge his own path free from any criminality. He wants to actually start doing the right thing for once, and actually be on the right side of history, which is why he starts working for the New Republic at the very end. It's honestly kind of sad really when you consider what happens to the New Republic in the sequels.
This is probably the most that I've enjoyed a Star Wars movie since Revenge of the Sith. Bear in mind it's not as good as Revenge of the Sith, but it is the most I've enjoyed a Star Wars movie since Revenge of the Sith, and it's the first time in a long time I've allowed myself to enjoy a Star Wars movie since Revenge of the Sith, and I wasn't clouded by Internet hatred 🛜. And I feel like you'd probably enjoy it. If you were hesitant to watch this movie because of the reviews, don't listen to them and watch the movie for yourself. You'll probably have a good time, if you aren't a super opinionated person who's difficult to please. However I will say that if you aren't interested in the criminal side of the Star Wars franchise, or the bounty hunter side, of if you're not interested in the Hutts, then you get much out of the story of this movie. But you'll probably like the Imperial holdout stuff, that's pretty interesting.
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