Look, Dave Filoni is probably the best thing that’s happened to this franchise in years because the guy actually understands what people loved about Star Wars before everybody started treating it like a sacred text that needs to be dissected frame-by-frame on YouTube for eight straight hours. He understands the vibe. The adventure. The weirdness. Half the magic of Star Wars is just watching strange little creatures wander around filthy space ports while some idiot barely survives another terrible decision.
And Jon Favreau gets it, too. You can feel both of them dragging Star Wars away from sterile franchise sludge and back toward something handmade and scrappy and fun. Not everything has to redefine the mythology or connect to fifteen other shows. Sometimes you just want to hang out in this galaxy for two hours and watch weird space nonsense happen.
And thank god for that.
The Mandalorian & Grogu is easily the best Star Wars flick in a long, long while. I’m dead serious. This is the first time in YEARS I walked out of a Star Wars movie feeling hyped instead of immediately wanting to argue about lore, canon, or why some random scene breaks the established continuity.
Seriously, everything in this movie feels alive. And I mean ALIVE, alive. The second Din and Grogu get tangled up with all these bounties (and then with the Hutts after Jabba’s death), the whole galaxy just explodes with activity. Weird little freaks running through the frame. Broken droids dragging themselves around. Smoke pouring out of pipes. Market stalls overflowing with food (and Martin Scorsese!!!) and junk. Creatures yelling at each other in the background while some shady deal is probably happening ten feet away from the actual scene.
Half the time, I was distracted watching all the chaos behind the plot.
And I mean that as a compliment.
The movie feels messy in the best possible way. Like the camera just wandered into some lawless desert truck stop in space where everybody looks tired, armed, and slightly dangerous. Every location feels like if you turned the camera thirty degrees, there’d be another insane little story happening offscreen somewhere. THAT’S Star Wars to me. Not clean CGI corridors where everything looks polished and empty.
Pedro Pascal is great as Din Djarin, too. At this point, the guy can tilt his helmet slightly and somehow make it funny. And Grogu still works. I genuinely don’t know how they pulled that off because that character should’ve become unbearable years ago. But the puppet work is incredible here. He actually feels present in scenes rather than just being a CGI mascot dropped into the frame afterward.
Sigourney Weaver rules, too, by the way. She slides into this universe so naturally; it’s honestly insane nobody put her in Star Wars sooner.
And man, the effects look GOOD. Not “modern blockbuster good.” I mean tactile good. Stuff has weight. The creatures look physical. The environments actually look dirty. There are multiple sequences where I swear they were sneaking in little stop-motion influences, especially in some of the creature animation. It reminded me of old fantasy movies where everything moved slightly weird and jerky in this really charming way. The whole movie has this feral handmade energy that modern Star Wars usually sands down.
Also, the easter eggs are handled perfectly because they’re not standing there screaming REMEMBER THIS?? every five seconds. The biggest one for me was the electronic chess game from A New Hope finally being fully realized. THAT is the kind of fan service I want. Take some weird little thing sitting in the background of the old movies and expand it into something cool instead of digitally dragging dead characters onscreen for applause.
And the score by Ludwig Göransson absolutely rips. Best Star Wars music in forever. Dude, the second those electronic beats and synth pulses started creeping underneath the orchestral stuff, I was locked in. So much blockbuster music now just sounds like wallpaper. This actually has a pulse. Weird tribal drums. Lonely western themes. Electronic textures. Giant heroic music. Somehow, it all works together without feeling like it’s desperately trying to “modernize” Star Wars.
I don’t know, man. This is the first time in a long time Star Wars actually felt BIG to me. Weird-big. Dangerous-big. Like the galaxy exists outside the plot instead of waiting around for the next cameo. It’s messy and funny and occasionally kind of dumb and honestly? Good. Star Wars SHOULD be a little dumb sometimes.
Praise the Maker indeed.
MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Runtime: 136 mins
Director: Jon Favreau
Writer: Jon Favreau
Cast: Pedro Pascal; Brendan Wayne; Lateef Crowder
Genre: Action | Adventure
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "This isn't about revenge. It's about preventing another war."
Distributor: Disney/Buena Vista
Official Site: https://movies.disney.com/star-wars-the-mandalorian-and-grogu
Release Date: May 22, 2026
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: Once a lone bounty hunter, Mandalorian Din Djarin and his apprentice Grogu embark on an exciting new Star Wars adventure.
