idk if I care about Star Wars anymore

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]I made this Star Wars logo LEGO set last night. I hope you like it. I was really proud of being able to read the instructions. Hi again, guys. And I recently went to go see the new Star Wars movie. If it's a surprise to you that a new Star Wars movie came out, that makes sense to me. It's called The Mandalorian and Grogu. It stars Pedro Pascal, though he was probably only on the set for like a day where the rest is voice-over work and his stunt doubles were just doing like a hell of a job just standing in really, really menacing ways. Hell of a luck he made a stir run on that one. But overall, I feel like it's had a surprisingly quiet release.

[00:00:30]I'll get to my thoughts on the movie here in a minute, but I want to set up some context as to my experience with Star Wars and also give a warning for just a smattering of spoilers from across different Star Wars media because we're going to be talking about a franchise more broadly today. And spoilers include some stuff for the movie, but to a lesser degree if you were planning on seeing it. Star Wars occupies a very weird spot in the pantheon of things I've been a lifelong fan of. Sonic the Hedgehog did a lot of community building for me in my early internet days. Same with Call of Duty or Halo or really anything that was like online multiplayer-centric. And while Star Wars is a shared interest among me and friends, and I can certainly talk with someone about it until their head explodes from me repeating myself, I feel like on an individual level, it was like a less socially transformative franchise for me than other stuff I was into growing up. I am still a sucker for Star Wars slot. The majority of LEGOs I buy are Star Wars, and it's weirdly the multimedia franchise I'm most excited to see a game get made in. Probably because I got into the franchise through the video games, and I did that without having ever seen the movies first, much less being around for a theatrical release of one. So when Disney bought the rights to Star Wars back in 2012 or whenever it was, it was at a time where the Star Wars stuff we were getting was all spin-offs, and the concept of getting to have a theater experience with a franchise that got its origins in theaters was exciting. Disney was like in a good spot with how they were handling Marvel at the time, so I thought, "Hey, this seems like a potentially exciting time to be a Star Wars fan." I had really profound thoughts at 12 years old, okay? If you enjoy this video, this card at the end will take you to another one like it, and be sure to drop a like and subscribe with notifications on so you never miss an upload. The Force Awakens was the first Star Wars movie that I saw in theaters. Even though I had already been a fan of the franchise for most of my life at that point, it was fucking magical. Really the first movie I ever watched that made me soy face and point at a screen in public. When Last Jedi came out, I didn't hate it nearly as much as some others did, but I have soured on some aspects of it as time has gone on. But it all really started to fall apart for me when Rise of Skywalker released, and I had a one-of-a-kind movie experience. One that I genuinely have not replicated since that movie came out. I was there on opening weekend in New York City watching it with some friends, and it was the most split reaction for a film I have ever experienced with an audience. Full spoilers on this one because I do not give a shit about the sanctity of the plot of that movie. Things that were getting big cheers from other people I would audibly groan at, like that Rey and Ben kiss made me put my head in my hands and wholeheartedly think that this franchise was cooked, like seared in an iron cast pan cooked. This shit has like extra nutrients. And as I was leaving the theater, an employee who was waiting to clean up the popcorn people had thrown around asked me directly, "Hey, how was the movie?" And the only answer I could muster up for him was like a long-suffering expression of grief, to which he replied back to me, "Yeah, I thought that might be the case."

[00:03:20]Something that a couple of my friends busted a gasket at. Ever since then, I found myself in a weird time of my life as a Star Wars fan. These last 7 years since Rise of Skywalker, we've found ourselves in an era where every new release is more of a spin-off than like a true new entry in the franchise's greater narrative. And for a time, that might have been for the best because of how royally they screwed the pooch of continuity when they attempted a trilogy treatment over at Disney. And since then, Star Wars has turned from like a movie first franchise into a TV franchise. There are tons of shows littered all over Disney Plus in various formats from animated and live-action, many of which you haven't heard about, all of varying quality, and most of which have not been watched by me. The franchise as a whole seems to have like a lot of influence from this guy, Dave Filoni, these days. He's the cowboy hat-wearing guy behind the Clone Wars animated show. He has made good stuff.

[00:04:11]And the show that ushered this era in was The Mandalorian, a show I remember being genuinely really gripped by in a way I didn't expect myself to be. Given it was airing right before the clusterfuck Rise of Skywalker hit theaters, but it was a show telling weird little side stories about a bounty hunter going around with his green little buddy doing odd jobs around the universe with very little connection to the established canon. Maybe The Mandalorian went to Tatooine too many times for my liking, but it was still cool. Season 2 was similarly exciting for me, and I maintain that it was really good. The main criticism I would make of Season 2 isn't even really a critique of that season of the show itself. It's just with the introducing of Boba Fett and Bo-Katan, and especially the inclusion of Luke Skywalker, this was the first major occurrence of the cameo club galore that I think has exhausted a lot of people in any Star Wars stuff that followed. It was like the ground zero of the glup shit of a cation of it all. Callbacks to existing lore instead of doing new stuff that made The Mandalorian Season 1 so exciting contributed to the universe feeling a lot smaller. But even still, in a vacuum, Season 2 of The Mandalorian made efforts to shake up the status quo of the show. Like Luke takes Baby Yoda, aka Grogu, to train him as a Jedi. Mando claims the dark saber through combat and via Mandalorian tradition is therefore the rightful heir to the Mandalorian throne. And to me, that was an incredibly exciting setup for what a Season 3 of Mandalorian could look like.

[00:05:34]A Season 3 that came and I never watched because it had just fallen off my radar by the time it came out, and everything I heard about it when it was airing just made me sigh real discontentedly. Like The Mandalorian gives the dark saber away to Bo-Katan, and he gets reunited with Grogu really freaking fast from what I understand. That might have happened in the Boba Fett show. I don't remember, but it was like we got no time to sit with the new idea of what his life could be at all. I think Disney got cold feet at the idea of taking some big swings with what the baseline of the show looks like. Baby Yoda is just simply too marketable. So there was a very slim chance that them being separated was ever going to stick anyways. And the format of how the show had been running up to this point was the most popular Star Wars thing Disney has made since the sequel trilogy wrapped up. So taking that format and pushing it to the side to keep trying new things probably put an exec's nut sack in his throat. Now because The Mandalorian is easily the most popular Star Wars production of the Disney era or at least most well liked. It makes sense that when they want to return to theaters after 7 years, they tap into old faithful. They get back Jon Favreau who helped create the show at the start and have him direct and also co-write alongside Dave Filoni. For me it felt like there was a lot riding on this movie being good or if nothing else, it at least being a hit like something that makes money. So with all that in mind, how am I feeling about it? Well, generally I tend to be less cynical about these things. I have no shame in admitting that I am consumer supreme. I genuinely believe that if you stick me in front of any piece of media and I spend enough time with it, there's a good chance I'll end up liking it. But even still, I was most certainly not blown away by this thing. And I didn't get that special feeling in my gut that I usually do when I see Star Wars movies in theaters previously. Like even the intro of Rise of Skywalker with Palpatine returning via Fortnite lore managed to stir something in me. And it's easy to say that I'm just getting older and aging out of these sort of emotions, but that's not entirely true.

[00:07:28]I still feel like this at times when I see some movies in theaters to this day or experience other art at home. It's not like it's an emotion I'm incapable of feeling anymore. I have a little whimsy left in the folds of my brain.

[00:07:39]There was just very little to go on here. I I'd give it like a slightly above mid rating. Like if five is mid or average, then I'd give Mando and Grogu a six. And a large part of that is because it feels like four episodes of the show trimmed of some of their fat, give it a much higher production budget, and then weave together to be one continuous runtime. Like there are bits of the movie at roughly every 30-minute mark where what the Mandalorian and Grogu are doing just hard pivots because the last plot beat wrapped up, and I could imagine the credits rolling on an episode. The characterization is just all so flat, like mechanical, with the exception of a Ramdin joke at times. All that ever gets said is what needs to be said to get to the next scene. Like I don't think anybody at the end of the movie was different or a more developed person than they were at the start. With the exception of Rotta the Hutt, who is Jabba the Hutt's son, and also the same ugly fucking baby that Anakin and Ahsoka had to rescue in The Clone Wars movie pilot. In this film, he repeats that being the son of Jabba the Hutt is so hard because everybody's scared of who his dad was. And he just tells you that in Jeremy Allen's monotone voice several times. And that's his whole reason for being in his current predicament.

[00:08:48]Rotta's most distinguishing feature in this movie is that he's hench as fuck.

[00:08:52]And look, the idea of an out-and-out brawlic strongman Hutt character is a compelling enough concept to warrant it existing in my opinion. And he does some funny stuff. Like in his introduction, he just kills a guy by fucking belly-flopping onto him and crushing him to death. That got a genuine laugh out of me, like as several moments in the movie did. There's genuinely good visual and audio design gags in this that got me to actively chuckle, but unfortunately, I can't recall any singular joke in the dialogue that got me going. I'm sure there is at least one, but I don't remember it. At its core, this movie is a really bog-standard space adventure that is heavily elevated by its presentation. I don't know exactly how to describe this, but Star Wars CGI, even if it has the same kind of reputation as slop that the MCU does right now. Even in Star Wars' worst films, the VFX are consistently incredible. Even with how slapdash Rise of Skywalker felt in its writing, the movie could be a visual treat at times.

[00:09:49]And The Mandalorian has a lot of that same shit going for it. There's a few shots that are just downright fucking dope. Like there's one where he puts his foot in a puddle and then the camera pans up as he walks over to a bar that I like stank faced at. And there's another where he's in the equivalent of like a rancor pit, but instead of it being a weird-looking dinosaur, this time it's a water monster who's fucking his shit up.

[00:10:09]And they had this shot looking down at the scenario he found himself in with the light of the entrance up that he fell through to the into the pit just flooding down on him while he's holding a spear to take on these insurmountable odds. And it looks fucking sick. Also, side note, they had The Mandalorian in scenarios in this movie that he just finesses his way out of where if he was experiencing this in the show, he would have been guaranteed minced meat. The action choreography has its moments as well, but it's not going to blow you away by any means. It's all just kind of serviceable and not very offensive to my senses. The other angle you can take if I'm just looking for a reason to genuinely recommend this movie is if you're a creature feature guy. This movie is just full of freakazoids. Like they have the entire holochess Dejarik monster roster from the holo table game in A New Hope where they're CG animated in a full fight with Roda and The Mandalorian. The fucking Babu Frik species is here, too, and we get to see like the tiny spaceship that they go into hyperspace with. They're hanging out with Grogu and they do some sort of tiny dude adventures where with how good the puppetry {slash} VFX work on Grogu is, it's pretty fun to watch. Some of the NPC characters, including the one played by Martin Scorsese of all people, is this four-armed street vendor chef guy. And the aforementioned water dragon is absolutely wicked. It's one of the cooler designs I've seen out of Star Wars in a while. I could swear there was a point where he was just like straight up looking like the cover of the Aragon book. And speaking of production elements that just elevate all the mediocre stuff this movie is doing, Ludwig Göransson's soundtrack is so fucking good. Like he was already doing black magic on the Mandalorian TV show, but he just cranked it up to 11 here.

[00:11:47]There are so many sounds in this movie that just aren't in Star Wars music very often. Like somehow there's trap music, there's more guitars that I've ever heard in a Star Wars movie before. It made pretty much every scene on screen an immeasurable amount more enjoyable because your ears were having an orgasm at the same time your eyes were See, it's some normal shit. Now, there is more stuff I could genuinely praise about this movie, but as a story, it just feels so flat. A movie can have like a pretty whatever plot or story, but like it it can be lifted up by its characters and like how it progresses them. But it really doesn't do that much either. Like I I guess I know that the Yoda species instinctively make little mud huts to live in now, which yeah, that's cute. And there's a ton of little cute things Baby Yoda does. Like when he's showing survival acumen we hadn't seen before, there's a bit where he takes care of the Mandalorian and it shows his growth as a character being more competent on his own. And it's very sweet to see those two's dynamic a little bit reversed, but I can't help but feel that this whole movie is kind of just Dave Filoni playing with dolls and smacking them against each other.

[00:12:52]Like sure, he created the Mandalorian and Grogu. Those are his most popular action figures. But Rotta the Hutt is one of the first things Dave ever did in Star Wars, taken from one of the most unpopular episodes of The Clone Wars and turned into a roided out Jax so he could fight shit now. For me, one of the most baffling inclusions Zeb from Star Wars Rebels. He's here to be the pilot, but only on occasion. Sometimes he's not the pilot because Mando will just take the wheel from him to fly the ship himself.

[00:13:20]So it's not like Zeb is the go-to guy here who's good at piloting. He gets no characterization in the movie worse than anybody else with screen time, that's for sure. The only time he does something is when the movie needs an extra set of hands to do dirty work like killing storm troopers or whatever. And his presence is never explained or given a reason to an audience that has probably not seen most of the other stuff that Dave Filoni has made in this franchise including the shit that he comes from. I guess he's in Mando season 3, again I don't know, I didn't care to watch it. But even still like a lot of people seeing this movie will not have watched any of the seasons of The Mandalorian. I'm pretty sure this movie had a smaller budget than your typical Star Wars production, so it'll probably be able to turn a profit. But for maybe the biggest movie franchise of all times returned to the big screen, it just felt really flat. It wasn't even like a huge crowd pleaser like Force Awakens was.

[00:14:11]And it's tough for me because the last major Star Wars thing I consumed was when I watched both seasons of Andor sometime last year. And that show might be like the greatest Star Wars thing ever made. It's a spin-off of a spin-off that leads directly into the spin-off that it's being spun off of, a spin-off that itself leads directly into A New Hope. It's a prestige fucking television series and has some of the best writing of anything I've watched recently. It's like the one Star Wars thing I'm not going to recklessly spoil here. It's more recent, but it's also just that good. If there's one thing I would recommend from Star Wars that anybody can see the quality of, it is Andor.

[00:14:46]Like if I had to give you my top five Star Wars anything, in no particular order, these are just my five favorites.

[00:14:53]It's Andor both seasons together. The Star Wars The Old Republic MMO Imperial Agent storyline.

[00:14:59]>> [laughter] >> There's Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Sith, and because it's what got me into Star Wars in the first place, I got to give one spot to the first Force Unleashed game. I feel like I could maybe swap Force Unleashed out with the Clone Wars finale or an arc from that show that was of similar quality, but only one of the things I've named is directly of the Disney era. And The Clone Wars is maybe the only thing of Dave Filoni's direct work in Star Wars that I could endorse as like one of the best. The Mandalorian and Grogu is by far the biggest undertaking Dave Filoni has had a hand in with Star Wars. And if the shakeups at Disney recently are anything to go by, Dave Filoni is like part of the new leadership team on what direction [music] Star Wars will take as a franchise. I haven't watched that Darth Maul Shadow Lord show. I've and I've heard decent things about it, but I'm just not very excited by anything coming out from the series other than Fate of the Old Republic, that new game.

[00:15:50]And that itself is not really main continuity. It's like following up a really old spin-off series. I just feel like I'm at a point where I have to think of Star Wars in the same terms that I do the MCU, where there is going to be so much of it coming out from now on that most of it is probably going to be mid and not for me. But occasionally, because of the sheer amount that there is, there's going to be an occasional gem that word of mouth will let me know to check out. But I don't think I can bring myself to just check on the series as regularly as I used to, considering how nicked my recent experience with the series has been. Of course, this is all speculation and stranger things have happened, or maybe they will be able to pull me back in. But the more and more time that passes, I'm not sure why I should care about Star Wars anymore, at least not the way I used to. Maybe for the same reason that I cared about it in the first place, that I think it's cool.

[00:16:38]And really, what this video is is me reaching out to y'all to ask for recommendations on what I should check out. Like are there any of the recent Star Wars books I haven't read that are unreasonably good? Are there smaller Star Wars games from recent years I've missed out on that I'd find compelling?

[00:16:51]Is there a good shipping fan fic that you've seen? I do not have a grand point about the state of Star Wars as a piece of media other than what I've said already. I'm actually here to ask for more slop recommendations in the comments. This is an invitation to send me shit first and foremost. [music] Anyways, that's all I got. That card I mentioned should be on screen. Be sure to drop a like and subscribe with notifications on. Anyways, this has been quite and I'll see y'all at a galaxy far, far away.