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The first Star Wars theatrical release in seven years opens Friday, and critics are calling The Mandalorian and Grogu serviceable but disappointingly thin.
The first wave of reviews for The Mandalorian and Grogu landed Tuesday, two days before the film opens nationwide on Memorial Day weekend. The consensus, across outlets that rarely agree on much, is that the picture is technically competent and emotionally weightless.
This is the first Star Wars feature in seven years, since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. It is also the franchise’s first attempt to bridge the gap between its streaming-era Disney+ work and the big screen. Both halves of that bridge are wobbling.
Director Jon Favreau, who built The Mandalorian as a Disney+ series, set out to make a Star Wars film that worked for newcomers as well as fans of the three-season show. Pedro Pascal returns as Din Djarin, with Sigourney Weaver as New Republic Colonel Ward and Jeremy Allen White voicing Rotta the Hutt. The score is by Ludwig Göransson.
Gizmodo’s review summed up the film as fine, which isn’t fine for Star Wars, praising the action and craft while flagging a plot that hops from MacGuffin to MacGuffin without consequence. Collider went further, calling it one of the most empty and hollow theatrical features ever to grace the Star Wars galaxy, though it credited a John Wick-style opening sequence.
IGN’s read was no kinder. The outlet wrote that the film gets caught in a feedback loop of self-satisfied nostalgia and adds little to the moments fans already saw on Disney+. Den of Geek framed the result as disappointingly average and noted that even Pascal, behind the helmet, registers as a blank slate.
The plot, by every account, is dead simple. Mando and Grogu are hired by the New Republic to track down an Imperial war criminal. To find him, they cut a deal with the Hutt cartel and chase Jabba’s grown son Rotta across the galaxy.
Reviewers found one stretch worth singling out. A passage in which Grogu is separated from Mando and fends for himself in a swamp, filmed in vertical IMAX, drew comparisons to the quieter wonder of the original trilogy. The rest, multiple reviews argued, plays like an extended Disney+ episode at theatrical prices.
The film opens Friday, May 22, on a Memorial Day weekend with no major franchise competition. Disney has been counting on the holiday slot to restart its theatrical Star Wars business after the divisive sequel trilogy and a stack of feature projects that died in development at Lucasfilm.
A strong opening would buy Disney a runway. A soft one would extend the open question of what, exactly, Star Wars looks like on the big screen now. Either way, the reviews are out, and they are not the runway anyone in Burbank wanted.
