Mandalorian and Grogu: The Death of Star Wars Movies

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Wow, this is good. You know, I wasn't expecting much, but man, they really pulled through with this one. I've had some bad experiences with them in the past. There's there's been some bad tastes left in my mouth, but let me tell you, this meets all my expectations.

[00:00:14]Usually, I find that I need ketchup for this, but right now, I'm really liking this meal. It tastes pretty good. And these fries are pretty good, too. Oh, hey. Didn't see you guys there. Didn't see you guys there. Don't mind me. I'm just eating my Mandalorian and Grou Burger King meal. Let's go. Am I right?

[00:00:31]And like I said, these fries, not bad at all. Not bad. Oh. Oh, yeah. You want to hear my thoughts on the Mandalorian and Grou? Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. Well, I mean, that's fair enough.

[00:00:42]I did just see it. At least I I think I just saw it. I'm already kind of forgetting about it. It's like as soon as I walked out of the theater, it started seeping out of my mind like a fog, which is also kind of funny cuz I totally forgot the movie existed up until 24 hours before I went to see it.

[00:01:00]Huh. Very strange indeed. But man, this burger though, it's so good, boys. Whatever Disney gives you, just consume. Just eat the slop. It's delicious. Oh. Oh, yeah. If I had to give one sentence to sum up the movie, it would be this. It's the most unanticipated and forgettable Star Wars movie we've ever gotten. If you can call three episodes of the Mandalorian show stitched together like Frankenstein a movie. The reason I think this movie is so bad is largely because it shows how far Star Wars movies have fallen. It used to be that Star Wars would sell out stadiums whenever a new film dropped.

[00:01:37]And now when someone mentions that, oh, there's going to be a new Star Wars movie, we kind of nod, shrug, and go back to our day because it means so little to us. Now, let me go into detail on the movie itself to kind of show you what I mean. First of all, let me say that it's not even technically a bad movie. Like, I'm not arguing that content-wise it is a worse movie than, say, The Last Jedi. Uh, for what it's worth, it's a fun, light-hearted adventure. The Mandalorian and Grou do go on a quest. They kill some bad guys.

[00:02:06]They defeat the villains. And they go home at the end of the movie as exactly the same characters they were at the beginning of the movie. However, the whole time you're watching it, it is so obviously three episodes of the Mandalorian show stuck together like Superman and Green Lantern in the Lego movie on that piece of bubble gum.

[00:02:23]>> My legs are stuck as well.

[00:02:24]>> I super hate you.

[00:02:25]>> When I was in the theater watching it, I could tell when one episode of the show would have ended and where the next one would have begun because it doesn't even try to separate itself from the format of TV that it originally was. This inevitably begs the question of why it even needed to be a movie at all. I mean, the story is definitely nothing insane. It would have fit into the plot of a TV show very well. So, that can't be the reason they made it into a movie.

[00:02:49]There's no huge ground being covered canonically. It's not like it's another piece of the Skywalker saga that adds to the story of Star Wars as a whole. So, it can't be that either. And it doesn't really grow our characters in any meaningful way. There's kind of like a mini arc for Grou somewhere in the middle of the movie, but the movie itself barely seems to realize that, so that can't be it either. In the end, I came to the realization that the Mandalorian and Grou movie exists for two reasons and two reasons only.

[00:03:17]Novelty and merchandise sales. Th those are literally the only two reasons I can think of for why they would make this into a movie. Disney decided that it had been 7 years since Star Wars was in theaters. So, it was time to throw something in there just to say they were doing it. That that was the novelty portion. And the merchandise portion was that they could remind everyone once again just how cute Baby Yoda was and how snuggly and adorable he looks. And now they can do a meal with Burger King to capitalize on this momentous occasion and sell a ton more toys and stuffed animals of the Mandalorian and Grou. I mean, I'm not kidding you when I tell you that my theater literally played an advertisement before the movie started of Grou Walmart toys. And before the movie even began, I actually took my phone out of my pocket and took a picture of the screen because of how flabbergasted I was. They didn't even try to hide it. The writing was smeared on the wall as clear as day. I mean, look, they even have the QR code in the bottom corner so that I can go to the website of Walmart right now and consume their slap and buy a product like a good boy and do what Disney wants me to do.

[00:04:22]This was the nail in the coffin for me.

[00:04:23]I truly believe that one of the biggest reasons this movie was made is so that they could remind the world that Grou exists and so that they could sell toys and merchandise of all of these wonderful characters that everyone of course loves so much. And look, Star Wars always has been at least in part about selling merchandise. I mean, when George Lucas was selling the rights to it, he made sure to maintain the merchandising rights because he knew even then how much moola he can make out of it. And boy, did he make some moola out of it. I mean, this guy, George Lucas, capitalized off Star Wars merchandise. The difference, however, is that George Lucas was also a great storyteller who made sure to create awesome characters and stories that he could then sell merchandise of. It was a fair trade-off. He got billions of dollars from selling awkward C3PO tape dispensers. And in return, we got the most legendary film saga of all time.

[00:05:14]But putting a literal ad before the Mandalorian and Grou screening was just another level of insulting. Like, give me a little credit. At least let me walk out of the theater before you slap me in the face while they're with all your with all your advertising mumbo jumbo BS, please. But I guess that's how little Disney thinks of their fans. Just as wallets to be picked. Uh, don't think, guys. Just go ahead and scan the QR code we're putting in front of you.

[00:05:36]Maybe maybe if Disney ask me really nice, I'll hit a little oogie boogie.

[00:05:40]Maybe a little hoola in the theater just because they asked so nicely. I mean, that's what I'm here for, to do what Disney wants, right? It's just insulting. So, yeah. Novelty and merchandise. Those are the two motivations I came up with for the movie even being a thing in the first place.

[00:05:55]Frick, man. I don't like the sequels.

[00:05:57]Like, I think the sequels are bad movies. But at the very least, the sequels could justify their own existence. There is nothing about this movie that needs to be a movie. The story is nothing crazy. It's not especially cinematic or visually stunning. And the characters are the exact same at the end of the movie as they were at the beginning. It just feels like a nothing burger of a movie at the end of the day. Novelty and merchandise. Those those basically sum up the reasons this film even exists.

[00:06:23]But I have delayed long enough. Let's now look at the movie itself and go over first some of the things I like because those did exist. There were a lot of things in the movie that I thought they did well. Let's start there. As I mentioned earlier, the movie itself is a fun and somewhat charming adventure. The the plot is very simple, and they feel they need to explain what they're doing and why they're doing it again and again every 15 minutes. It gets very annoying, but it at least doesn't take itself too seriously and try to be some deep story with an important message when it's clearly just a space cowboy and his sidekick going on a quest. Going into it, I really did think that the fan service characters that we saw in the trailers were going to be shoehorned in and forced badly into the story, but they were actually all used pretty naturally and well for the plot. The Hut twins were decent villains, although I will say that we were baited and switched for the first half of the movie. the remnants of the Empire were made out to be the bad guys and then all of a sudden on a dime the Huts became the epitome of evil and we basically don't hear about the Empire again for the rest of the movie. But the Huts are good villains. That's what I'm trying to say. Plus, they do speak Haties a little bit which is a small relief. I really thought they would speak English the entire time uh as a result of Disney thinking that we, the audience, were too stupid to read subtitles. It turns out that Disney didn't think we were too stupid to read subtitles, just that we were too stupid to do it for more than a couple sentences. So, thanks guys. guys.

[00:07:42]It means a lot. We we we appreciate it.

[00:07:44]I mean, thank you for that. Likewise, Embo was pretty good in his role as the hitman of the Huts, and he wasn't overused by any means. I thought they showed remarkable self-restraint by only having him in the movie for a few minutes total, and he did fit into his part of the story naturally. Finally, Rada I was the most worried about, and I thought that he was going to be here as fan service only because we saw him that one time in the Clone Wars movie. Uh, funnily enough, another one of the most forgettable Star Wars movies. What a coincidence. However, they did have a real character arc for him to some small extent where he wanted to escape job shadow and be his own man, which clouded his vision and led him to making some choices that weren't very wise, like fighting in a death pit for his whole life. I You know what? We all make mistakes in our 20s. What What are we What we're all We're all stupid when we're that age. What can we say? I mean, I'm 38. I look back on that and I laugh.

[00:08:34]I was so dumb back then. But yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at his character.

[00:08:39]And speaking of being surprised, his voice was so bad. Like, it literally distracted me from the character. I knew that the guy from the bear was doing his voice acting, but I figured they'd put like a filter on it or something. It just sounded terrible. I took a video in the theater cuz I couldn't believe it.

[00:08:55]Here, take a listen.

[00:08:56]>> You signed me to his staply bankroll by boards and training.

[00:09:00]>> Are you serious right now, bro? Also, while we're speaking of huts, the CGI was a little rough. Like, back in 1983, Java the Hut was a huge puppet, and he still looked way more realistic than any of these animated boogers oozing around and throwing themselves at each other in live action. Turns out I did not need multiple extended scenes of what huts look like when they fight. And while it's cool to see initially, you know, Rod of the Hut with an axis fighting the Mandalorian, whatever, the novelty wears off pretty quick and just becomes kind of hard to watch. But overall, I was surprised at how naturally these already known characters fit into the story.

[00:09:37]Another thing that was done well was the action. There were a lot of good fight scenes throughout the movie that were just some good old classic Mandalorian brawling. In the first scene, especially, Mando is moving like prime John Wick. He is popping off and that was pretty cool to see. They definitely delivered when it came to that. I will say though, by the end of the movie, I saw a lot of fighting and not enough character development. It seemed like they were more worried about visual spectacle than making a super memorable plot or really interesting characters.

[00:10:05]In fact, the only character who got any character development in any way was Grou. He had this little arc in the middle of the movie where the Mandalorian was out of commission, poisoned by a giant snake, and Grou had to take care of him, protect him, and nurse him back to health. I think it was supposed to show that Grou is growing up and learning that he has to be mature sometimes and think wisely. It wasn't phenomenal. it won't win any Oscars, but in a movie where not a single other character gets developed in basically any way, there was some small semblance of growth. I'll take what I can get.

[00:10:36]Those are most of the things that I liked about The Mandalorian and Grou movie. And to be fair, there were quite a few. Like I said earlier, it's not technically a bad movie, but when I say that this is probably the worst Star Wars movie, I more mean that it's the most forgettable, least anticipated, and nothing more than a few episodes of a TV show put together and shown in theaters.

[00:10:57]That is by far the most obvious and serious problem with it. However, there are a lot of problems with the actual content of the movie itself, and let's go over those. Now, I've already talked about this a good bit above, but man, is this just a few episodes of the show The Mandalorian spliced together. We already knew that going into it from the trailers and stuff, and from the beginning, it seemed like there wouldn't be too much difference between this and the show. But when you're watching the movie, it just begs the question, why is this a whole freaking movie? What could the justification possibly be? And the answer, of course, is what I talked about at the beginning of the video, the novelty and the merchandise. Regardless, if you've ever seen any episodes of The Mandalorian, it's unavoidable that you notice how much like the show this is. I can literally tell when an episode would have ended and where a new one would have started. That's how solidly it's outlined. And yeah, you could say that about any movie. I guess that the plot could be split up into a TV show. Like that could technically be done with any story in general. But the difference here is that these characters, the Mandalorian and Grou, have only ever had their stories told in episodic show format. And it seems weird to make a movie if you're not going to do anything different from the show. It to me, it would seem like the logical thing to do would be to keep making the show because that's clearly what you've been doing up until this point. It is also interesting because the movie does not build off anything we know in the show in almost any significant way. I mean, the word Jedi or Luke or Ahsoka is not mentioned in any way. Not that we need that for fan service, but just for backstory.

[00:12:27]Same with Bokeaton or Moff Gideon. I mean, the the movie really picks up in a place that the show never really left off. It seems like all three seasons we've gotten have barely mattered compared to where The Mandalorian starts in the movie. I don't know, maybe I'm harping on this too much and it it didn't like destroy the narrative or anything, but when I was watching it just seemed so obvious to me. I was thinking about it the whole time cuz I could so clearly see in my mind where it' been cut up. So, I don't know. That to me was really, really a big standout.

[00:12:56]Another low point was the dialogue. It was actually like pathetically bad. I never thought I'd miss George Dugas' cringey prequels Shakespearean dialogue, but man, at least that had heart.

[00:13:07]>> I don't like sound.

[00:13:11]>> So many of the lines in this movie are soulless and empty with no passion or care behind them at all. Plus, let's not forget that due to our generation's increasing lack of an attention span, the movie felt the need to re-emphasize everything the characters are doing at every given point just so that no one can possibly miss it when they're scrolling their film. For example, at at the beginning of the movie, they're trying to capture this Imperial warlord because he'll lead them to more Imperial leaders that the New Republic can then take down and those guys will give up valuable information. But instead of just making this clear once and letting it stand, they remake this point entirely every time it comes up. Uh Mando gets back from a mission and they tell him he needs to capture this guy and it's really important. And then a few minutes later, they say yet again how important it is that they catch this guy so they can find more Imperials like him. And then when Mando does finally catch him and bring him back to the base, the leader is like, "Well, you should have helped the huts, but good thing you caught this guy. He'll lead us to more Imperial warlords we can take down." And they'll give up valuable information. It just gets tiring after a while. It's like, we get it. We heard you the first time. Those of us who are paying attention heard you the first time, and you shouldn't cater to those bums who are watching Tik Toks.

[00:14:19]Something else that gets tiring is how bad the world building is in this movie.

[00:14:23]We We know that Disney is terrible at this given how absolutely atrociously it was done in the sequels, but it hit home once again in this movie. The opening crawl talks about how fractured the Empire is and that the New Republic has to stamp it down to keep it from growing back to its old strength. But who and why is the Empire? Cuz there are tons of warlords with a bunch of stormtroopers who still listen to them readily. So if there are so many of these warlords, then how fractured is the Empire really?

[00:14:49]I mean, just cuz they don't have Star Destroyers anymore, it still seems like they're pretty present and prevalent.

[00:14:54]Also, at the end of the movie, the big reveal is that Mando was right not to trust the Huts because the Huts were double crossing them to work with the Empire. But how are the Huts working with the Empire if the Empire is so fractured? Is it like one warlord they're working with or a conglomerate or are there just huge swads of the Empire that are still hanging around out there somewhere? Also, the main force that Mando is working with is the New Republic with Zeb and them. But what even is that? Like what is the New Republic and what power do they have?

[00:15:24]Are they just a bunch of guys at this random awe air base? Cuz that's all we see in the entire movie. They're never anywhere else and the New Republic is represented nowhere but here. While these questions don't really take away from the plot that much except for not understanding the Empire because that's a big part of the first half of the movie, it more just weakens our understanding of the Star Wars universe post Return of the Jedi. And speaking of weakening our understanding, these Imperial warlords are set up like they're going to be the big bad guy of the movie and we really get into it into the thick of it. But then the movie spins on its heel and the Huts become the villain with the Empire completely out of the way. It just feels like such a jarring shift and it really does a bad job of framing who the bad guys actually are. We get the sense that the Empire was supposed to be the ultimate enemy of the New Republic and therefore of the Mandalorian and Grou and then halfway through the movie, the Hut twins get dragged in as the epic villains that they all have to fight. It's not that it doesn't work. I I mean like most of this movie, it does make technical sense, but it simply put it doesn't help us understand what Mando is trying to do as much and doesn't place him in the story as much as he could have been if we had a more concise and well-placed central villain. That's what I think. And Mando himself is kind of rough in this movie.

[00:16:36]I mean, he's kind of lit when it comes to fighting basic bad guys with a blaster and a flamethrower and a wire and all kinds of blades and stuff, but they just make him kind of a stupid guy who makes a lot of bad decisions. He falls into traps easily. He doesn't make smart choices, and it comes across more like he gets lucky than he's actually really smart and skilled. For example, there there's this one scene in particular I'm thinking of where the Mandalorian has just recovered from getting poisoned and the whole hut army, including Embo, is after him. And the Mandalorian and Grou luckily find a ship to escape in. But instead of escaping, Mando decides on a whim that the best thing to do in the circumstance after just recovering from his poison is go back and fight the huts with like the one blaster and one axe he found inside this beat up old ship. There's no reason for him to do this, by the way. I mean, it is a perfectly valid option, and the movie tells us as much for him to leave the planet, get weapons, supplies, maybe some reinforcements, and come back later to finish off the huts. Like, him staying to do this now with one rusty battle axe is not the only solution. And yet, it's the one he ends up going with just cuz it's like cool in the moment, I guess. And then, of course, he takes them on all by himself and wins, largely due to plot conveniences and random strokes of luck. But, it's stuff like this that makes us think Mando's not actually that smart or crafty. and more that he gets by because of his indestructible armor and luck. Plus, the movie doesn't really know how to do new stuff with the Mandalorian. I mean, there are two entirely separate plot points in entirely different sections of the movie where the Mandalorian is thrown into an arena and forced to fight an enemy for the entertainment of others. It happens twice in one movie.

[00:18:16]It's entertaining, sure, but by the end of it, it also definitely feels like the plot is dragging a little bit and it's repetitive and it's going in circles for no real reason. it just gets old. Also, this is more of a personal one, so let me know if you guys notice this as well, but the soundtrack is weird. It's like a Cynthy video game level soundtrack. It doesn't doesn't match the mood at all in my opinion. It really feels out of place and definitely not Star Warsy at the very least. Uh, that one's not as big of a deal, but it does kind of represent how out of place this movie is compared to literally any of the other Star Wars movies. Look, here's what I'll say about The Mandalorian and Grou. Uh, first, let me just say the title is ugly as freick.

[00:18:54]I just realized as I was saying it that calling the movie The Mandalorian and Grou is just not an aesthetic title.

[00:19:00]Would not recommend. But aside from that, here's what I'll say. The movie itself has its ups and downs, and there's stuff I like and stuff I don't like. But in my opinion, the real problem with it is the reason it exists.

[00:19:12]It's Disney slop that they pumped out and put into theaters just because it's been 7 years and because they wanted to sell toys and Burger King meals. The fact that nobody is really excited for it and is instead kind of remembering last minute that it exists represents a downfall in Star Wars that we have never seen before. Star Wars movies always in every setting used to be cultural moments that everyone took part in with lines around the block and global fanfare and fans dressing up in costumes outside of the theater. Even the sequels with all their many, many faults undeniably still had hype behind them.

[00:19:48]There was still a huge crowd of people who were really excited for every movie and every movie felt like an event. But now, thanks to Disneyification, there was just forgettable content slap that, oh yeah, we can go watch if we want something to do on a slow afternoon and Seinfeld's on reruns or something. It It's just it doesn't mean anything anymore. What makes The Mandalorian and Grou the worst Star Wars movie in my opinion isn't the content, but rather the fact that no one cares. The fact that the movie was made with the knowledge that no one really cares and yet it was made anyway. And the fact that the story is one that's so easy not to care about. There is nothing remarkable about this story. There's nothing we haven't seen before in some TV show tucked away in the depths of Disney Plus somewhere. And that's why in the long term, this show is not going to make a splash, not going to have any cultural significance, and not going to have any staying power in any way. No shade whatsoever to the actors, by the way. They all do a very good job in this and Pedro Pascal in particular is really good. I mean, he's a good actor in general. And speaking of actors, boys, you need to watch this video right here where I ranked every acting performance in Star Wars. It's a great video. I think you're really going to like it. Go check it out. Thanks for watching. See you later, boys. I