The Mandalorian and Grogu is What Star Wars Should Do

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]You know, I am deeply deeply upset that throughout the entire runtime of this movie, Grogu didn't say his famous catchphrase, "It's Grogan time."

[00:00:09]What are we What are we even doing?

[00:00:11]Sorry, my my openings get dumber and dumber, I feel like, with every video.

[00:00:15]Anyways, hello Interwebs. I am here to talk about the latest Star Wars release and the first Star Wars film released in theaters since 2019 with The Rise of Skywalker, which as we all know was definitely a high point for the franchise. It was definitely a point for the franchise. But this one, The Mandalorian and Grogu, directed by Jon Favreau and written by Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, and I think there was one other credited writer on this, but a continuation of their Disney Plus series Star Wars: The Mandalorian.

[00:00:47]Now, initially, I actually didn't expect to be doing a review of this movie. I kind of expected to go in, see the movie, be like, "Yeah, that was that was a movie." And not have much more to say about it. And if I don't have much to say about something, I usually don't end up doing a review unless it's a TV show that I'm currently already reviewing or something like that. But I came out of this film actually having a lot more thoughts than I thought I would. And I just needed to discuss it somewhere with all of you. So, technically, this video is going to be a review of Mandalorian and Grogu. And I'm going to talk about the film. going to talk full spoilers on the movie and do a full discussion on the film. Though I'll try and give a little bit of a warning before I get into more meatier spoilers about the movie. But I also kind of want to use this as a jumping off point to talk about a larger conversation that this sort of sparked within me about Star Wars as a franchise and also Hollywood filmmaking and franchise movie filmmaking in terms of where we're at right now in the industry with all of that. Because I think this movie is sort of sitting at this really interesting point within all of that and a discussion within all of that. And I've been watching a lot of the discourse around the movie go out online, namely around a lot of the reviews being fairly negative, but the audience reaction being kind of like, "Yeah, it was a fun time. It's It's okay." And I got I kind of want to wrestle with all of that stuff a little bit within this video and just share with all of you and hear what all of you think because I'm kind of fascinated by this film in a lot of different ways. So, let me start off by talking about the film itself, and I think that that'll kind of naturally lead into the larger discussion on Star Wars and franchise stuff. So, going into this movie, I really wanted to make sure I set my expectations appropriately, and I think that that's kind of a large part of the discussion around this film. Because I think a lot of people are looking at this like, "Oh, it's the first Star Wars movie back in theaters since the last like ending of the Skywalker saga films." Like we've been getting a lot of Star Wars, both animated and live-action Disney Plus shows, but this is the first time where like we're back in the theaters, and that feels like something momentous for Star Wars as it should. Star Wars has always been and it was right at the start of the blockbuster filmmaking spectacle of Hollywood. Like Star Wars was one of the first movies that kicked that off besides Jaws. And so, we when we go to see a Star Wars movie, we kind of expect that level of spectacle with this film.

[00:03:12]But for me, I kind of looked at this film and I think and I think this is sort of the appropriate calibration for this movie in kind of relation to the first X-Files film. Um for those of you who don't know, I'm watching X-Files for the first time. I know it's been one of those weird like missing pieces of my science fiction knowledge, so I've been watching it for the first time, and I just recently, a few months ago, got to the first X-Files film, not the 2008 one. I'm still I think in season 7 right now of The X-Files.

[00:03:38]And I watched that movie, and my expectation going into that movie, again, watching it not in theaters, but at home on my, you know, TV downstairs, and I kind of went into it being like, "Okay, it's going to be a bigger version of the TV show. It's going to have a little bit of a bigger budget. Maybe to push forward the mythology in a little bit of a way, but I get to spend sort of a bigger budget time with these two characters, Mulder and Scully, that I really like. And And sort of calibrate it to that scale instead of it being like, "Oh, it's going to be, you know, some mind-blowing big movie." And I remember, cuz I was alive at the time of the X-Files movie, even though I didn't see it when it came out, I remember a lot of the discourse around it was a lot of people were disappointed by the film being like, "Oh, it's kind of a blah film. It's It's a whatever thing." Like, "Yeah, pushes forward the mythology and stuff." I won't spoil that movie for you, but pushes forward the mythology, but people kind of thought it was fairly blah. But for me, though, watching this movie today for the first time, I was like, "I really like this." By no means was it my favorite episode of the X-Files, but I liked that it had this bigger budget thing and felt like a momentous moment for the characters. Uh that one scene in the hallway, if you with the bee, [ __ ] that bee. If you know if you're an X-Files fan, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Um but [ __ ] that bee, but it felt like again a momentous moment for the franchise. It felt like a good kind of concluding chapter for it, but it I I didn't go into it with these big expectations of it being something huge. And I think that that felt like the right calibration for this Mandalorian movie.

[00:04:58]And having now seen it, I feel like that was appropriate. I I came out of this movie being like, "Yeah, that felt like a good 2 hours of the Mandalorian show that felt elevated uh by the budget and the time that they had. And clearly they had figured out how to do puppetry stuff even better with Grogu, and they they really showed it off." And so it felt like, "Okay, this is this is a big episode of The Mandalorian, but it's not at the level of a Star Wars film." And I feel like the big problem with this movie, I think going out of it, is that I feel like a lot of people And I think this is partially on Disney, expected it to be that Rise of Skywalker thing. And again, I think that that is partially to Disney's fault. Like if this was coming out in a healthier Star Wars ecosystem where we had more Star Wars movies coming out that felt big and momentous, I feel like a lot of less expectation would be placed on this film. Um or if this movie had been sort of uh sanded off the Star Wars brand and The Mandalorian was like its own TV show like the X-Files thing was, I feel like people would be more receptive to it because to talk about the movie itself, I came out of this really enjoying it quite a lot. Like there are things that I don't like. My biggest problem with the movie overall is that it has some of the most bland dialogue I have ever seen. All of the characters when they speak feel fairly flat. In fact, there's a couple moments in this movie where we have Rotta the Hutt, who is a main character of this film who I actually really liked. Uh it was weird seeing like a big CGI uh jacked Hutt walking around as like a character. Um he sort of reiterates his backstory twice in this movie through dialogue and I'm like, why are we hearing the same information again and not giving this character a little bit more characterization through his dialogue? Like all of the characters in this movie from Mandalorian himself to Zeb, who is a character from Rebels who appears in this movie. Though, what I liked about Zeb is they don't ever explain that he's a Rebels character.

[00:06:50]It's like, look, let me tell you my history from Rebels. He's If you didn't know Rebels, he's just a character in this movie and I thought that was smart.

[00:06:55]Uh so it's like fun for the Star Wars nerds, but you didn't need to know him at all in any other case. Um but even Zeb, who is like a character who had big personality in Rebels, has no real personality here. He says, "Yeah." and does like he says like a couple like things but and a couple quips, but he doesn't really have much of personality.

[00:07:11]And like all of the characters have this. Like there's a scene where Mandalorian goes to a shopkeeper who's like running a uh like a food stand trying to get information out of him and that guy kind of does the typical like It's played well. The actor is playing it well, the voice actor, and the animation gives him a lot of personality, but the lines are just fairly standard like, "Oh, I don't want to tell you anything. Whoa. Why would you want to know that? Don't say that name around here." Like it's all very standard. And while that dialogue fits Mandalorian as a character, like what he says like, "I can bring you in hot. I can bring you in cold." Like The Mandalorian is a character who would be very uh forward-facing in that way.

[00:07:43]Like, he would just say things flat out.

[00:07:44]Like, I don't expect a lot of personality from him in terms of his dialogue, a lot more from his physicality. Uh, but all the other characters kind of do that, too. And as a result, the dialogue is just kind of boring and flat and ultimately repetitious.

[00:07:59]>> [snorts] >> But beyond that, I think the rest of the movie was relatively fun. You know, again, it didn't blow my mind away, but there was a certain level of, you know, Star Wars charm throughout all of this.

[00:08:10]And I think it's actually strongest when this movie has no dialogue at all. There are stretches of this film where there's almost nothing at all being said, and it's just visuals on screen. Whether it be the pretty decent action sequences, or the, uh, what I thought was even more impressive, the large stretches of the movie that are just like focusing on Grogu, or Grogu and the little Babu Frik from Episode Nine. And those sequences, again, with no dialogue whatsoever, were charming and fun, made me laugh. I had like I enjoyed myself, and it was nice to see a movie on this budget doing sort of old-school Hollywood filmmaking things with puppets, rather than it being on a big bland CGI backdrop, VR wall, the volume sort of thing. And I want to encourage more movies and TV shows to do that. I mean, one of the reasons I never really I've never been a big fan of The Mandalorian show. I think season one was its strongest. Uh, but one of the reasons that I didn't like it is it was all shot on that VR wall, so everything just looked flat and open and like Tatooine with like vast deserts, and everyone's standing in a semicircle cuz everyone stands in a semicircle in the VR, you know, volume wall. Same thing with Star Trek does that a lot of the time, too. Watch Star Trek, uh, from like Strange New Worlds onwards, and or season 3 of Discovery, uh, like onwards, and you'll see how often characters like standing in big, wide-open spaces, standing in a semicircle talking to each other. Cuz they're all shooting on that damn, uh, volume wall that I kind of hate. Like, there are uses for it, but I think it's overused, especially in science fiction. And here, with this movie, there's a lot more practical sets. Like I'm sure they did use some of that stuff, but I could tell that they built up like a forest and things like that. And I really kind of just enjoyed that practicality of some of this. Like yes, there's a lot of CGI, there's some CGI monster fights, but the filmmaking on display, you felt that there was some at least old school style Hollywood filmmaking on display here that I really enjoyed. There's a monster fight in this movie.

[00:10:01]And I'm kind of going to get more into bigger spoilers with this. There's a monster fight in this movie with a giant snake thing.

[00:10:07]Where like I I'm I always enjoy big monster movies and I really like seeing like whenever I see people fighting giant monsters, I'm happy.

[00:10:15]Uh but I've been watching things like the Kong versus Godzilla movies or even the recent like Monarch TV show on Apple TV. And I'm just sort of like numbed to the giant monsters in that movie despite me loving giant monster Godzilla Kaiju movies because they're just shot so wide and with a lot of CGI and I never feel a sense of scale with any of it. Here with this one with this snake dragon, I think it's what it was dragon snake, whatever it was, that Mandalorian was fighting, I felt like oh, like I get the sense of the geography, I feel a sense of scale, I feel the sense of danger with this thing as Mandalorian faces off of it based on the shots. Even though a lot of it takes place underwater, like I even had a sense of what was the geography of underwater and all the vines going through the arena that he was fighting this monster within. And that felt good. It felt like okay, this is a good action sequence.

[00:11:05]There's another fight near the end of this movie where there's like he's battling Mandalorian's fighting two mechs and I know where Grogu is in in that fight, I know where both the mechs are in that fight. I think they probably used practical effects for those mechs.

[00:11:15]It looked like they were maybe they added like a starter to some CGI, but it looked like they were doing some sort of stop motiony stuff with it. Maybe it was just CGI with like a stop motion filter put onto it, but it looked good. It looked like there was some practical stuff on set that they were playing with both with Grogu the puppet and with with the fight itself with Mandalorian.

[00:11:34]And I was like, this looks really fun.

[00:11:35]I'm enjoying being physically in this space with these characters.

[00:11:39]And I really kind of in just enjoyed that. And it again, it didn't feel like it was a big you know, sweeping epic like most Star Wars movies have been even something like that wasn't part of Skywalker saga like Rogue One or Solo.

[00:11:52]But actually the smaller scale benefited it quite a lot. This was just ultimately this was just a small scale movie with Mandalorian like having to deal with some gangsters and both Imperial ex-Imperial gangsters and Hut gangsters. And it expanded the lore a little bit. We get to see Nal Hutta where the Hutts are from which you've heard a lot about in Star Wars lore, but I got to see it for the first time. And the other element of this too that I really enjoyed and this is kind of going to get into my larger franchise discussion here and and maybe this speaks to my expectations and why I have I have enjoyed this more than maybe I would have in another time period is that there were no needed connections to the larger expanded universe. Like there was no after credit scene like an MCU movie.

[00:12:33]There was no big cameo in this film.

[00:12:35]There's a moment in this movie where we're mainly sticking with Grogu and I won't say exactly what if you haven't seen the movie yet, but there's a moment where like he's walking through the forest and he sees like a fire in the distance. And I sat there being like, oh who's going to be around that fire? Is it going to be like Han Solo is on this planet or you know, like deep fake Luke Skywalker or deep fake Leia. Like I was trying to like rack my brain who's like who would be around this time period in Star Wars and who would be hanging out in the swamp? It can't be Yoda cuz he's dead at this point. Like I I was just sitting there trying to like figure out who what cameo this is going to be.

[00:13:09]And then it got to the point and it there was no cameo. It was just like some old lizard man who's like cooking fish in the woods and I I was like, great. This feels like there's a little bit of sense of magic and discovery here and it's not like waiting to see which larger expanded universe person's going to show up to make me go, "Ooh, look, I remember that character. He's in this thing, too. Oh, what a shock. It's Ahsoka. It's Cal Kestis. It's whatever."

[00:13:34]And I don't know why I'm doing a Mickey voice. Actually, I do know why I'm doing a Mickey voice. Uh >> [laughter] >> I know exactly why I'm doing a Mickey voice.

[00:13:40]Um but it was like, "Oh, no, it's just a guy." And I kind of enjoyed that. Again, I I don't want to set the expectations of like it blew my mind. Like, ultimately, that scene with the weird little lizard man in the woods, I feel like could have been better. Like, I wish there'd been like maybe some sage advice passed on to Grogu from that guy or like a a moment of a a character moment. Again, it kind of goes back to the bland dialogue. Like, it's a good beat, but I wish it had been something more like the I don't want to write rewrite the movie, but it's something like the guy had been like, "You know, I wish I wasn't here alone. You got You've got someone, Grogu.

[00:14:13]Uh and you That's good. Make sure you take care of your your dad." Sort of thing.

[00:14:18]Um just to like give a little bit of character beat rather than a plot beat to that.

[00:14:22]So, I I don't necessarily think it was like mind-blowing, but I at least appreciated that there was this desire by the filmmakers not just to to avoid expanded lore stuff, but to uh to give a sense of like discovery and magic that you got in something like Empire Strikes Back, where like Luke goes onto Dagobah and he runs across this weird little man in the woods, Yoda, and it turns out Yoda is this big deal. But there was that sense of discovery there that I think this movie was trying to recapture. It doesn't fully get there in terms of, you know, something like the original Star Wars trilogy, but it's angling in that direction. And that's a direction that I really appreciated a hell of a lot more than so much franchise filmmaking we've been seeing lately. Like, I had this experience a few weeks ago where my partner and I we were debating going to the movies.

[00:15:07]Like, we have a Friday open. Do we want to go see a movie? And, you know, I wanted to see a few like I wanted to see like Hokum. I was like, "I want to go and see some of these smaller horror films." She wasn't really feeling it.

[00:15:17]And the only movie we both were like, "Oh, we're both kind of interested in this." was Mortal Kombat 2.

[00:15:22]And we were about to go and I sat there being like, "You know, honey, I really don't know if I want to go see this. Like I want I love Karl Urban. I'm always down for more Karl Urban. And I even like Mortal Kombat. Those are the fighting games that I played. I'm not a big fighting game fan, but the one fighting game series I played was Injustice and Mortal Kombat, both made by the same people, NetherRealm. And so I was like, "I'm interested in these characters and lore and whatever, but I look at the film and I'm like, it's just going to be not even that interesting of like it'll have some visual fight sequences, but they'll all be on green screen. It'll be a lot of references of like characters like saying, 'Get over here!' or like doing the doing the thing that they always do from the video games. And Karl Urban will be will be uh inject some personality to the proceedings, true, but it's it'll just be kind of a bland story with a bunch of references and me pointing being like, 'Oh, yeah, I know Kano. I know Kano. I know Kabal. I know these characters from the game. Ooh, look, they're on TV now.' And I just thought about that and I'm like, I don't know if I want to waste two hours doing that. I'd rather stay here and watch like an indie horror movie that I haven't seen before. Like that's much more worth my time. And we ended up watching Exit 8, which was also oddly enough based on a video game, but certainly has a much more indie horror feel to it, uh which is great, by the way. Go watch Exit 8. It's a really good movie. Uh so, ironically, we ended up watching a video game adaptation, but one that felt like it wasn't beholden to like this larger apparatus of franchise filmmaking. And frankly, Mandalorian and Grogu does a similar thing. Where again, yes, there are like again, if you know extended Star Wars lore, you know, like, "Oh, it's Radda from Clone Wars. Oh, it's Zeb from Rebels. Oh, it's the the the two villain Hutt twins of this movie are the villains from The Book of Boba Fett." If you really care about that.

[00:17:00]Like, yeah, these are there are some larger extended like connections that come from the Dave Filoni-verse sort of stuff. Uh but none of it felt like you needed to know Like if I if I had just like forgotten all that and didn't know any all of that and I had we went with some friends who didn't know any of any of that, um it was you didn't need to. The film does that itself and it doesn't place such grandiose weight on these characters that you're feeling like, "Should I know that character?" Like, here's a bounty hunter that shows up in this movie and I'm like, "Oh, I recognize him from somewhere. What was he in? He was in like the an episode of The Clone Wars or something where like Obi-Wan was like working with Cad Bane and this clone this bounty hunter showed up or something like that." And so, I was like being like, "Oh, yeah, I recognize that bounty hunter." But, like you didn't know that bounty hunter. He's just a cool-looking bounty hunter and the movie doesn't present him in a way that's like, "You should know this reference."

[00:17:49]He's just a guy who shows up at one point. And the movie does tell you everything that he does there. And I really like that. Frankly, I could have even done better without like it being a character pulled from another animated TV show. That actually distracted me more and I feel like you could have gone even more in that direction just create a whole new character. So, I'm not going to say like it it it doesn't feel somewhat beholden to this larger Dave Filoni reference machine that he's sort of built over the past couple decades at this point. But, I I feel like there's at least some level of restraint on the this movie's part.

[00:18:23]And I kind of want more of this direction. Like again, I don't think that I don't want to like wildly blow expectations out of the water. I think my expectations were set on like X-Files movie, not Star Wars movie, X-Files movie.

[00:18:35]And I was pleasantly surprised by that.

[00:18:37]And again, I think I look at the larger thing here of I think a lot of why the reviews are so negative on this movie uh cuz most of them have been fairly meh mixed to mixed like mixed to generally positive but generally mixed.

[00:18:50]Um some negative. Uh the but I I feel like I I look at that and I feel like it's because people want like Episode Nine.

[00:18:59]And I get that. I get like we should like I don't want to This is the sort of difficult thing that I sort of struggle with this with this movie, to be frank with all of you, because yeah, this movie is is good.

[00:19:09]It's not great, it's good. And I don't want Hollywood to be settling for it's good. You know what I mean? Like I don't I don't want there being this thing of like, oh we'll just settle for mediocrity.

[00:19:22]Right? I like like if we're going to do big blockbuster movies, part of the fun of blockbuster movies is that they take these big hits, and big swings with something.

[00:19:30]And I I want blockbuster movies to be doing that, to to make the big swings instead of it just being bland CGI fest.

[00:19:37]So I I on one hand I feel that with this movie. This movie wasn't trying to be something big, and I wish it had kind of had a bigger swing with it.

[00:19:45]However, it is maybe the best to put it this It is in a direction that I would prefer Hollywood filmmaking be going, which is some practical effects, telling a self-contained story that isn't beholden some extended universe lore, and uh feels like there's some there's some actual sincerity in the film, some actual care in the film. It wasn't all just done by some producer who was like, all right, we got to check all the boxes of like making this film hit all these specific boxes for our franchise, you know, checklist or whatever.

[00:20:17]It's It's a movie that's just trying to do its own thing, and feels like the filmmakers like Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni like put some heart into the movie.

[00:20:24]>> [snorts] >> That's I think the thing that I really appreciate about this movie more than anything is like there was no cynicism I felt in the movie. It felt earnest. Like even the dumbest thing like Dave Filoni himself has a cameo in the movie with his stupid little cowboy hat that he always wears, and he makes himself an X-wing pilot at certain points. But that didn't feel like a moment of, oh look, it's a reference. Look at the look at the thing that you know, or or at least like cynical moments of like brand synergy, or like the Han Solo's last name getting explained, or how did Han Solo get his blaster? Like those sort of like cynical checkbox moments.

[00:21:00]The stuff with like Dave Filoni appearing just felt like earnest. Like, yeah, Dave Filoni, he's a Star Wars guy.

[00:21:07]He's probably so happy he got to be an X-Wing pilot in in a movie finally. Like he's probably over the moon about that fact. And there's a level of me that's like, I you know what? I appreciate that like level of earnest excitement from a filmmaker uh in going into the film. Is it self-indulgent? Sure. But like that's not beyond what other filmmakers have done before. I mean, Alfred Hitchcock, uh he himself would make little cameos in his movie. That was part of the game of some of his movies like, oh where's the Alfred Hitchcock cameo going to appear? Hitchcock himself kind of a shitty dude overall. But like his movies were great and he that like the cameo part was part of the fun of it. Kind of like the Stan Lee uh stuff was for many many years before Stan Lee passed away is like, oh where's he going to show up? And that always felt less cynical and more like earnest.

[00:21:49]Like, oh where's the cute place where he's going to show up and makes you smile a little bit. And here with Dave Filoni, you know, I have feelings about Dave Filoni's writing style and who he is like. But at the end of the day, you know, I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of the Dave Filoni verse. I would much rather a Tony Gilroy direction with Star Wars than a Dave Filoni direction with Star Wars if I'm being frank. But at the end of the day, I do at least appreciate that the man is an earnest fan. And that he he does seem to uh want to just like be earnest in these stories rather than it being like, let me reference all my favorite things. And and I think that that's appreciated. I think ultimately though, my biggest I think probably the thing that I I feel is most the thing that I wrestle with here is woah, there's still a sense of trying to recapture old magic with this. Not just within Star Wars, but the magic of old Hollywood.

[00:22:46]In the sense that like I kind of alluded to before is like, I like this direction. But even with stuff like Grogu going through the forest and like playing with the lights and there's like these beetles that he plays with and all of these things. It's like, oh we're trying to capture that old like uh Muppets sort of thing or Dark Crystal sort of feeling, or uh the magic of like that that like the Larian movies that like Star Wars Skeleton Crew is kind of capture trying to capture the ET sort of thing. And you get that sense of wanting to recapture that instead of doing something a little bit new. And you kind of even see it with just Mandalorian and Grogu themselves as characters. Obviously, this is not the movie's fault. This is the TV show's fault, but like Mandalorian is not Boba Fett, and Grogu is not Yoda. You know, they're references to other characters.

[00:23:33]They're sort of palimpsests, or not palimpsests, that's the wrong word, but like carbon copies of you know, simulacras of these other characters.

[00:23:42]And I think that they have done enough work to make them stand a little bit on their own separate from those characters, but not like Grogu definitely stands away from Yoda, and I think Mandalorian a little less so from Boba Fett in that both of them don't really have a ton of character. I'd honestly have to argue Boba Fett kind of has a little bit more personality based off of his TV show than Mandalorian does at this point. Boba Fett the show aside, I have issues with Book of Boba Fett, but I honestly feel like you know, that show, regardless of its many structural problems, brought a lot more character to Boba Fett and his sort of relationship to like indigenous peoples with the um the Tusken Raiders.

[00:24:19]I thought was sort of an interesting addition to his character, even if it didn't go much of anywhere in that show's plot. Uh but and Mandalorian has sort of less of that other than his caring for Grogu.

[00:24:31]But there is this sort of like simulacra element here of like we're trying to simulacra a little bit of Star Wars. And while it's done with sincerity rather than cynicism like other start stuff that I've seen like Solo itself was, or probably my biggest point of comparison would be Star Trek Picard season 3, which is so reverential to the nepo babies of Picard and bringing back all these characters and let's get them back on the Enterprise D. And it's like sort of recycling those stories. This movie Mandalorian Grogu doesn't feel like it's necessarily recycling those stories in a very cynical way, which is a direction that I really appreciated. But, it's still almost trying to be a simulacra of the Star Wars Larry and ET vibe. And I And that's sort of why I don't necessarily think it's such a big swing.

[00:25:16]And why I come down so interestingly in tension with this movie. I think it's probably the best way to put it. I liked it. I think ultimately where I come down to is like I liked this movie. This is a style of film that in many ways I would like Hollywood to be doing more of with its franchise media, of trying to do original stories, trying to do things that don't have to be stand part of a larger extended universe. Not to say that it can't relate to a larger extended universe like the original MCU movies were like Iron Man, Captain America, they stood on their own and then had like one nugget of expanded universe lore, whereas now everything has to sort of a tie into some expanded universe lore. Uh and tie into the Disney Plus shows, and tie into all these things. Like I don't want I want less of that. So, more movies that stand on their own.

[00:26:02]Uh and more movies telling their own stories with original characters that feel like they are part of this universe and yet still their own selves. And yet the other tension in this movie is like yes, it is trying to capture uh an element of like the magic of something. It's still somewhat beholden to the past. But, is that always going to be the case with a franchise film?

[00:26:22]How much can we expect from franchise works? Can we expect more than that? Um I don't know. I I feel like, you know, my like if I if anyone ever gave me a Star Wars movie to make or Star Trek movie to make, I would want to like do something completely different. Like still deal with those worlds. Like my big always thing was like do a political Star Trek show, which like like set in like a West Wing or like a political thriller or like a you know, an Andor sort of thing. Like an Andor I think is probably a a comp for this. Like that's a show like that feels like it's radically different from all the other Star Wars stuff, and yet it still feels Star Wars. That would what I would be wanting to do with a lot of these franchises. Like, still feel these things, but do something new with it.

[00:27:02]But, at [snorts] the end of the day, these corporate conglomerates are not going to allow that. You can listen to like Damon Lindelof. He talked recently about his on the House of R podcast, his Star Wars movie that he was trying to do. And his thing was like a Protestant Reformation within Star Wars. Of like, what's the center of Star Wars? What does Star Wars mean? The forces of nostalgia versus the forces of progress was sort of And I'm like, that's the conversation I want these movies to have. But, he said he was fired from that movie for exactly that kind of reason. Of like, not being able to figure out what that is. And I think it's because these media conglomerates are so beholden to the idea of what these stories have to be. And so, I want to like, I want to break them out of that. But, again, at the end of the day, I just realized this is the reality of the capitalist hellscape we deal with in. And I feel like more and more what I am feeling is I want more original stories, new things, not big franchise stuff. And I say this as someone who's like a big Star Trek fan. But, as much as I've liked Star Trek, uh, even in this modern era, more than most people, um, I know that's controversial.

[00:27:58]Uh, I still also understand that a lot of Star Trek is sort of stuck into its is beholden to its own past in a way that I wish it wasn't, uh, in many, many cases. And let me put it this way. I want more than that. I think you could do more with these franchises if you gave it to like someone like Damon Lindelof to address something like that. Or, you know, a Tony Gilroy, maybe a better equivalent.

[00:28:24]Um, but I don't necessarily know if we're ever going to get that. And maybe The Mandalorian and Grogu is not the best we could hope for, but at least a direction with these franchise pieces of media that at least feels better than The Rise of Skywalker direction or the Star Trek Picard season 3 direction that we've been going in.

[00:28:42]So, I kind of look at this movie and go, I think this is the nudge in the right direction for me.

[00:28:48]Um or at least a direction that I don't hate as much. Is it the best direction, the direction that I would want, necessarily, ideally? No. But, I look at it and I go, "Okay, I'll I will I feel more engaged by this than Mortal Kombat 2 or, you know, whatever bland Tron: Legacy maybe a better another equivalent movie that came out recently that's kind of fits in that mold. You know, uh So, I don't know. Again, I sit in an interesting tension with this movie of like what I would ideally hope for versus what I expect. And I think maybe that kind of comes down to where we're at with this movie and this franchise of like is this what we can expect from this?

[00:29:28]You know what I mean?

[00:29:29]And I don't know. I think the bigger tell for me at the end of the day is going to be The Last Starfighter.

[00:29:34]What is The Last Starfighter going to be? That uh Ryan Gosling Star Wars movie that's coming out, I think, next year.

[00:29:39]I think that'll be a bigger tell for me of what this franchise can possibly do under Disney at this point.

[00:29:44]Cuz if that movie turns out to be like a very stand-alone movie, heavy practical effects, you know, tells a really strong story that doesn't feel beholden beholden to like ex- extend the brand out further, be like in terms of like going past the Skywalker saga, but it's just telling its own tale and doing its own thing, um and really feel that it has the weight of, you know, the blockbuster stuff behind it versus Mandalorian Grogu, which feels like more like, "Oh, we're just extending out the TV show." Then I'll be a little bit more encouraged. But, if The Last Starfighter is like, "Oh, he's turn That's to be Cassian Andor's kid, and we're going to move everything around Cassian's chil- child, and this sets up like a new trilogy, and look at all these cameos we're going to have in here." Like, if it ends up being in that direction, I'll be like, "Fuck. I [ __ ] can't." Um so, I think that I think The Last Starfighter Is that what it What is it? Is The Last Starfighter?

[00:30:31]Cuz I think that that's that's a whole other movie, which I also really like.

[00:30:34]Whatever the star- starfighter star- whatever whatever the next Star Wars movie is, I forget what it's called, the Ryan Gosling one coming out. Uh I feel like that'll be a bigger tell for me on where I feel about Star Wars.

[00:30:47]But as a franchise media, I feel like I I Maybe I'm just disillusioned looking at like the Paramount David Ellison of it all and him being like we're going to do bland action movies until we [ __ ] die and we burn everything to the ground with the nostalgia.

[00:31:03]That just sounds exhausting to me. And at least Mandalorian Grogu does wasn't exhausting. It was like, "Oh, yeah.

[00:31:12]Not great, but like I enjoyed this. I had a good time at the theater as a setting my expectations appropriately."

[00:31:19]Yeah, all right. I've rambled enough.

[00:31:21]What do you think? I'd love to hear all your thoughts down below. But beyond all that, I hope you my friends as always live long and prosper.