As the first live-action Star Wars movie in seven years, The Mandalorian and Grogu ditches the constraints of the Skywalker saga to explore an entirely new corner of the universe, wholeheartedly embracing the spirit of the Saturday matinee movie serials that inspired the original Star Wars.

Premise: Now working as a freelancer bounty hunter for the New Republic, ‘The Mandalorian’ Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his adopted son/apprentice Grogu are hired by Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver) to bring in an elusive Imperial war criminal. But to do so, they must first find and rescue Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White), the son of the deceased gangster Jabba the Hutt, who has gone missing.

Review:

It’s probably fair to say that 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was, on the whole, a massive disappointment, largely as a consequence of the fact that it laid bare that the producers of the Sequel Trilogy had no overall plan and no real idea where their overarching story was going. Having produced five films in five years between 2015 and 2019, it’s now been seven years without a Star Wars film, and a large part of that is probably because of the mess left behind in the wake of The Rise of Skywalker.

Since 2019, however, Star Wars has had a lot of success telling long-form stories on TV, and their two most successful shows were arguably The Mandalorian and Andor. Both those shows chose to tell (slightly) more grounded stories, away from the Jedi Knights and Sith Lords, focused instead on the ground-level protagonists operating in the Star Wars universe. But whereas Andor explored the political thriller genre, The Mandalorian went back to Star Wars’ roots by embracing the tone of the classic adventure movie serials.

“…a thrilling, breakneck adventure that the whole family can enjoy together…”

Those adventure serials, with their dashing heroes, non-stop adventures, and frequent cliffhangers, where a clear inspiration for Star Wars’ Original Trilogy (as well as the Indiana Jones movies) – and Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is a film than embraces that tone in the same way that its earlier TV incarnation did. As such, the movie takes audiences on a thrilling adventure, packed full of interesting locations, relentless villains, and dangerous creatures, with barely time to catch your breath in between encounters (with one noticeable exception).

As such, The Mandalorian and Grogu will not be everyone’s cup of tea, and those looking for deep character introspection or complex plot dynamics may want to move along. This is a film that knows exactly what it wants to be – and that’s a thrilling, breakneck adventure that the whole family can enjoy together, watching the good guys fighting the good fight against the forces of evil.

“…there were several plot developments that I didn’t see coming…”

That said, there were still several plot developments that I didn’t see coming, so I don’t think it’s fair to call the movie predictable or lacking any plot. Not only did the mission to rescue Rotta the Hutt (voiced by the multi-award-winning Jeremy Allen White) not pan out in the way I was expecting, but by the halfway point in this movie, I genuinely had no idea where it was going next.

While Din Djarin, aka ‘The Mandalorian’, is voiced by Pedro Pascal in the TV show and this movie, it’s always been a lefty a slight mystery how often he’s actually in the costume itself – which is why it’s nice that Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne (the two stunt performers who also bring ‘The Mandalorian’ to life) got high billing in the title sequence for this movie. As good as Pedro Pascal’s performance is, ‘The Mandalorian’ is a character that’s also based to a large extent on his physical performance, and much of the credit for that also belongs to Crowder and Wayne. In fact, there are only really two main characters in this movie who are played by actors whose faces you can see – the legendary Sigourney Weaver plays Colonel Ward, the New Republic commander of the Adelphi Base who gives Mando his assignments, and Jonny Coyne plays Lord Janu, who runs the gladiatorial games on the planet of Shakari.

“…the love the filmmakers have for this universe is palpable…”

In terms of the voice cast, it was also great fun to hear Steve Blum reprise his role as Zeb Orrelios from Star Wars: Rebels (which was a great, and underrated, animated series), as well as Shirley Henderson return to voice the Anzelians. The movie even features unexpected vocal cameos from Martin Scorsese and Stephen McKinley Henderson as a couple of new characters – and for long-time fans of the wider Star Wars universe, there’s also first-time live-action appearances for several fan-favourite characters, vehicles and planets, as well as the return of an alien species not seen in the films since a brief appearance in 1983’s Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. The love that director/co-writer Jon Favreau and co-writer/Lucusfilm President Dave Filoni have for this universe and everything in it is both palpable and infectious.

The Mandalorian and Grogu’s move away from focusing predominantly on human characters (Luke, Leia and Han in the Original Trilogy, Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme in the Prequels, and Rey, Finn and Poe in the Sequels) is just one example of this film’s attempts to distinguish itself from the “main” Skywalker saga films. This film also drops the traditional opening crawl, and resists the urge to bring in the classic Star Wars theme music at any time – instead relying on Ludwig Göransson’s instant-classic theme from The Mandalorian to do the musical heavy lifting. The end result is a film that feels like it takes place in the Star Wars universe, but which doesn’t feel like more of the same – which is a good thing. One of the reasons why the Marvel Cinematic Universe was (at least, in its heyday) able to release 2 or 3 films a year was because they felt different and distinct from each other – Ant-Man was a heist movie, The Winter Soldier a conspiracy thriller, while Guardians of the Galaxy was a space adventure. The Star Wars films, on the other hand, had a tendency to all feel like “Star Wars films” – so it’s nice to see that The Mandalorian and Grogu (like Rogue One before it, which is still perhaps the best post-Disney Star Wars movie) is trying to do something a little different.

“…explores a different part of the ‘Star Wars’ universe…”

The pace of this adventure is relentless – but there are still moments snatched here and there to flesh out certain character moments: and there’s an extended sequence just before the finale where the movie takes a beat to pause and reflect on the relationship between Din Djarin and his adopted child Grogu. It’s to the credit of everyone involved that Grogu (who’s brought to life by a combination of animatronics and puppetry, augmented with VFX) feels like such a real character, and that the bond between a puppet and a figure whose face we never (or rarely) see can successfully form the emotional core of the movie.

There may be some who miss the Jedi, the lightsabres, and the epic scale that comes with the “main” Star Wars films, but I really enjoyed exploring a different part of the Star Wars universe, where the plot is focused as much on self-serving gangsters and the criminal underworld as it is on galaxy-changing events. One of my favourite sequences in the Original Trilogy is the prologue with Jabba the Hutt at the start of Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi, and The Mandalorian and Grogu is, in many ways, like that sequence extended into a whole film. You could accuse this film of just feeling like an extended episode of the TV series … but that really says more about the production values of The Mandalorian than it does about the quality of this movie.

“…kicks off the 2026 summer blockbuster season in style…”

I’m sure the time will come for another “main” Star Wars movie that focuses galaxy-changing events and galaxy-threatening dangers – but The Mandalorian and Grogu is a nice reminder that it is possible to explored smaller stories and more “grounded” characters in the Star Wars universe. Currently, the only other Star Wars movie in production is Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter starring Ryan Gosling – which looks like it’s going to be another film focusing on a “minor” character making their way in the Star Wars universe, so it certainly seems that (for the time being, at least) Lucasfilm is happen exploring new corners of the universe, rather than rushing to make another “main” galaxy-altering movie.

Obviously, this film will mean more to those who have already seen (at least some of) The Mandalorian TV show, but it’s also perfectly accessible to more casual Star Wars audiences. A refreshing, standalone, family-friendly adventure that kicks off the 2026 summer blockbuster season in style.