The Mandalorian and Grogu

This film has the dubious distinction of being the only "Star Wars" film that I haven't seen in the cinema - even the rather poor "Clone Wars" movie from 2008 isn't on that list. (Incidentally, that film really doesn't hold up, and since it wasn't particularly good even on first viewing that's not terribly good. On the other hand, it's the jumping off point for the outstanding "Clone Wars" TV series, so it's still worth the pain.)

Anyway, LC and I watched M&G over the course of the last week, and my overwhelming conclusion is that, frankly, I'm glad it's one that we skipped.

Don't get me wrong - it's a perfectly serviceable film with a handful of good moments. But more than anything else, it feels like Filoni and Favreau took their plans for a fourth season of "The Mandalorian", dropped the bits featuring Bo Katan, and then mashed the rest together and called it a film. Which is fine, but it all felt remarkably low budget for a "Star Wars" film.

In terms of performances, it's fine, but the film is seriously hampered by having one lead in a face-covering helmet pretty much all the time and the other being a puppet with almost no lines. That said, I enjoyed seeing Zeb in live action, liked Rotta and the other Hutts, enjoyed Scorsese's turn as a street food vendor... and, of course, Sigourney Weaver was excellent as ever - hopefully that's not the last of her we'll see in "Star Wars".

Speaking of Grogu, I had very mixed feelings about the effects there. On the one hand, it was refreshingly quaint to see almost all of that done with puppets and practical effects - there was something very "Labyrinth" or "The Dark Crystal" about it all, which was surprisingly cool; on the other hand, it lacked the slickness we've come to expect from CGI. I guess that was the point. (The same was also true of a couple of guardian droids later in the film - they were pretty cool, but also pretty odd.)

Ultimately, though, my impression of the film was kind of... hollow. It didn't really give us anything in terms of character growth, or much insight into the galaxy, or presented anything we hadn't seen before. Bo Katan was a huge miss, largely because Katee Sackhoff is another actor who it's always good to see in action. Basically, this was all just a bunch of stuff that happened. It was fine, but like "Solo", it was nothing more than fine.

Ah well.

In closing, I'll note that I think that ties into much of my frustration with modern "Star Wars". I'm very much not in the camp who decries everything Disney has done with it, or hailing everything Lucas did as genius. But I'm really frustrated that some of what Disney has done is absolutely brilliant: "Rogue One", much of "Andor", the first two seasons of "The Mandalorian", and almost all of their animated output (notably the final season of "The Clone Wars", "Rebels", "The Bad Batch", and "Maul: Shadow Lord"). But some of it has been utterly forgettable ("Solo" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu"), while some has been outright bad or even worse ("The Last Jedi" and "The Rise of Skywalker" - in particular that last). If it was all terrible at least I could just walk away and have done. But the occasional gems means there's motivation to keep coming back, only to be disappointed most of the time. A shame.