Is the Star Wars Franchise Finally Cooked?

[The following contains spoilers for The Mandalorian and Grogu.]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, i.e. 2019, a man in a helmet walked into a bar and quite possibly saved a franchise. “Saved” might be too strong a word, but it helps to remember that when The Mandalorian premiered on Disney+ in November of that year, the House That George Lucas Built (and Sold to a Mouse) was on slightly shaky ground. Solo, which chronicled the early days of Han Solo as a scrappy young smuggler, had been mired in backstage drama and severely under-performed when it hit theaters in 2018. The final episode in the long-running Skywalker saga, The Rise of Skywalker, would open a month after the TV show’s debut, and play like a pandering answer track to its risk-taking predecessor, The Last Jedi. There were still animated series that delved deep into the I.P’s backstories and dustier corners. But we had always wanted more live-action adventures set in the Star Wars universe, and now it was starting to feel like we’d wished upon a monkey’s paw.

And then along came The Mandalorian, which followed the adventures of a bounty hunter named Din Djarin. Everyone just referred to him by his association with his adopted home planet of Mandalore, or called him “Mando” for short. Like Boba Fett, he rocked a kick-ass steel helmet and some dope gear. Unlike his fellow gun-for-hire, he followed a creed known as “The Way” and had a strict code of honor. Plus he hung out with a Baby Yoda that allowed for a great Lone Wolf and Cub-style double act. Created by Jon Favreau, who wrote six of the first season’s eight episodes, this inaugural dip into streaming program provided a much needed sense of thrills, chills, and old-fashioned fun. It was set five years after the events depicted in Return of the Jedi, yet despite the occasional concessions to die-hards, it didn’t feel bogged down with the weight of so much in-house mythology.

By the time Season 1 wound down at the end of that year, you felt like the franchise might be entering a renewed of creativity and a period of small-screen prosperity that the movies couldn’t, or simply wouldn’t match. The Wookiee will live with the lamb, the Anzellan will lie down with the Hutt, the Twi’leks and the Zabraks and the Mon Calamari too, and a child — a small, green, long-eared and ever-so-adorable child — shall lead them.

Cut — or in the spirit of Lucas, screen-wipe — to 2026, and, well… you know. Former Disney CEO Bob Iger already thought that a “less-is-more” approach was needed in 2019, and that was before the glut of Star Wars content over the past seven years. The corporate overlords may have put the break on the movies, but the streamer has been regularly pumping out TV shows in order to keep milking the franchise dry. One has been top-tier (Andor). Others have been mired in gratuitous nostalgia (Obi-Wan Kenobi), left lost in the weeds with fan-favorite characters (Ahsoka), or a bad combination of both (The Book of Boba Fett). Even The Mandalorian, which aped the template of old television Westerns to great effect — they could have called it Have Blaster, Will Travel — begin tripping over crossover continuity issues. By Season 3, you would have needed to have seen the Boba Fett series and be up on a few other bigger-picture plot twists to understand what was happening. There was a bit of an all-or-nothing mandate being put into place, with the added crutch of diminishing storytelling returns. We call this the MCU Syndrome.

Still, the continuing adventures of Mando and Grogu, his lil’ force-wielding buddy from a swamp down in Dagobah, where it bubbles all the time just like a carbonated soda, remained the I.P.’s best bet for returning to the big screen. So we now have The Mandalorian and Grogu, in which Pedro Pascal once again dons the T-visored helmet and travels the galaxy. Where once he sold his services to the highest bidder, Mando now mostly hunts down bad guys for the Rebellion. And were you to judge this film, directed by Jon Favreau and cowritten by Favreau, current Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni, and Noah Kloor, by its opening set piece, you’d think the old magic was back. A gangster is extorting Imperial fugitives on the planet Hoth — 10 seconds in, and the callback levels are already in the red. Mando comes in shooting first, asking questions later. The mustache-twirling villain flees, both Half-ATs and full-on AT-AT Walkers come into play, and our hero and Grogu finish the job. It’s undeniably exciting in a very old-school way.

Having set up everything beautifully, the duo return to the rebel base where their handler — hi there, Sigourney Weaver — awaits them with a new mission. And that’s where the trouble starts. [Remember how we said there would be spoilers?]

Her character, Colonel Ward, wants the Mandalorian to track down a particularly nasty fella with ties to what’s left of the Empire and bring him in, dead or alive. There’s one problem: No one knows what he looks like. But “the twins,” a.k.a. Jabba the Hutt’s relatives who now run his criminal syndicate, have some intel regarding his whereabouts. Before he can capture the target, Mando has to do a favor for them. He’s got to find their missing nephew, Rotta the Hutt, and bring him back to the fold.

Rotta, by the way, bears some resemblance to his later father, but given that he’s a pit fighter paying off a debt, he looks less like Jabba and more like a ripped John Cena. (Rotta the Buff, amirite?) He’s also a CGI creation voiced by Jeremy Allen White, though you wouldn’t know it as his voice has apparently been run through a filter that makes it completely unrecognizable, thus begging the question: Why the hell did you hire Jeremy Allen White?! Let the man cook! Rotta has also been given a speech about how he doesn’t want to go back to his relatives, how being Jabba’s son has been a burden, and all he desires is to be his own man. Ironically, words cannot describe how truly awful the dialogue that’s been forced on White here — maybe he read the script and then had his contract stipulate the voice change, so as to distance himself from this tripe? There’s an old print-the-legend anecdote about Harrison Ford ripping into George Lucas on the set of Star Wars over his lines and telling his director, “You can type this shit, George, but you can’t say it.” The Mandalorian and Grogu‘s biggest connection to the original may be that it seems to have kept that questionable tradition alive.

Rotta turns out to be an ally to Mando and Grogu in their quest to find the mystery man. Mando double-crosses the twins before they inevitably double-cross him. Those Hutts sure do hold a grudge, however, and the remainder of the movie essentially becomes a cat-and-mouse game between the criminals and our dynamic duo. There are a few highlights along the way, including a chase scene that pays homage to The French Connection and a giant white sea-snake that looks like it slithered right off the cover of a Frank Frazetta-illustrated paperback. Grogu earns his place in the title. There is also an astounding amount of repetition, a sluggish sense of pacing, a handful of would-be zingers that simply become clunkers, very little sense of a character arc, and more dead space than you’d expect in a movie that takes it cues from gunfighter narratives and old-timey serials. The show’s eccentric approach casting that gave us Werner Herzog as a client now delivers us Martin Scorsese in a small role. And if you ever wondered what it’d be like to listen to America’s greatest living filmmaker voice a four-armed alien who makes interstellar grilled-cheese sandwiches out of a food truck, you should buy a ticket ASAP.

There are also, naturally, Easter eggs and appearances from several of the TV show’s recurring characters and deep-cut references and lots of stuff that will make the true heads squeal. Gotta service them fans! Several people at my screening cheered when a scene conspicuously cut away to a guy just sitting at a table; the credits revealed this anonymous pilot was played by Filoni, though I’d be lying if I said I did not think, “Wait, did they just drop a cameo of Kid Rock into this mess?” (Just saying.) It all concludes with a big firefight in the sky for old times’ sake. You’ll be reminded of the many great sky battles between rebel and imperial forces the movies have given us over the years. Such fond memories do not play well in this film’s favor.

Wasn’t this supposed to be Lucasfilm’s new hope for a big-screen revival? What happened? Its opening on a holiday weekend looks successful by “normal metrics” — it’s set to pass $100 million by the end of today — yet it’s already being earmarked as a likely contender for the lowest-grossing Star Wars movie to date. Loyalists were always going to show up for the first few days, but past that, you get the sense that folks wondering why they should go to the movies to see something that’d work better as a mid-season story arc is essentially creating a fizzle effect from the jump. And that wondering is justified. There’s little here to suggest that this needed to make the hyperspeed jump from streamer to multiplex. It’s strictly for the less-discerning fans and the shareholders.

Maybe the expectations around this being the thing that truly brought a sense of awe and majesty back to the series — helps us Pedro Pascal, you’re our only hope! — was unreasonable. But going into this release, you wanted this to be something that restored the idea that, pulpy-pleasure TV origins or not, Star Wars movies were events. Now they’re just more content in a sea of related I.P. overload. Box-office–wise, The Mandalorian and Grogu will keep the corporate bottom line from cratering. Creatively, it makes the whole franchise feel completely and utterly cooked. To paraphrase a wise man with a helmet: This is not the way.