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Matthew Fox
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Star Wars Generations Podcast. As I mentioned before, I was on The Film Board when we talked about The Mandalorian and Grogu. We’re going to wrap up our coverage of that movie with this episode rebroadcast for you right here. Thank you so much, and as always, may the Force be with you.
Pete Wright
A long time ago, in a multiplex not all that far away, Star Wars got off the couch. Seven years since the saga last darkened a theater, and it saunters back — not with a Skywalker, not with a Sith — but with a tin can dad and his green goblin son going to Space Mexico to rescue a swole teenage Hutt who would really rather you didn’t. This apparently is the way. I’m Pete Wright, and the New Republic has posted a bounty on this movie. Riding with me to collect it: Justin Jaeger, Matthew Fox, and Ocean Murff. Four hunters, one fighting pit, and a puppet that cost more than the Razor Crest. Let’s find out if The Mandalorian and Grogu brings the galaxy home, or if it’s just a very expensive nap with an A-minus Cinemascore. Welcome to The Film Board. Hello, everybody.
Ocean Murff
Hi.
Pete Wright
I want to start with a couple of things. Number one, Ocean and I happened to go to lunch a little while ago, and I said I was excited about this, and Ocean said he was very, very nervous. I feel like this is going to be a grand reckoning about Ocean’s anxieties. Ocean, are you still feeling the way you felt over Mr. Bentelberger?
Ocean Murff
Yes. I think yes. I can go into that a little bit deeper — after having seen the movie, what I thought about it. The Mandalorian is a good TV show. So this movie, it’s very good. It’s a good movie. It’s entertaining, the action sequences are great, and I’m a hundred percent here for the adventures of Grogu. It was also great in 3D. The primary issue I had, of course, is that the plot was thin. It felt like it should have been the first three episodes of season four, and then we just move on from there. I have spoken.
Pete Wright
Okay. JJ, your opening thoughts.
Justin Jaeger
I am in a weird place with this movie. If you’ve heard me over the years on The Film Board, you would hear me being angry about movies of this type. I think of it as — Pete, you’ve had the nickname before — Popcorn Pete, right?
Pete Wright
I’ve earned that. That’s been levied at me in the past.
Justin Jaeger
Well, this movie felt a lot like cotton candy to me. Very sweet, digestible, and it leaves you with a little bit of a queasy stomach at the end. But I will say that a cotton candy movie in the Star Wars universe is much better than cotton candy in other universes. I ended up liking it and enjoying it quite a bit, even though I’m usually not a big fan of this type of thing. I’ve got a lot to say on it, both positive and negative, but overall it was a fun action movie that I didn’t expect.
Pete Wright
I like that. Now, Matthew. Matthew, you come to us as host and proprietor of the Star Wars Generations podcast. I know you’ve just released a primer episode before going into The Mandalorian and Grogu. I’d love it if you’d share your opening thoughts as esteemed host in the Star Wars media ecosystem.
Matthew Fox
My thoughts are kind of a mix of JJ and Ocean. This was an interesting week for TV at the cinema. Apparently you could have paid a lot of money to see the final episode of The Boys on the big screen, or, as all of us did, you could have paid a lot of money to see what amounts to the first episodes of season four of The Mandalorian on the big screen. I think this would have been perfectly serviceable as the first episodes of the show. Knowing that, I’m going to have a lot of fun watching it again. There were a couple of things that really didn’t fit my understanding of what Star Wars should be. Emo Hutt is top of that list. The fight scenes I thought were a little long, but definitely a lot of fun. All of the stuff with Grogu learning to become more independent and take care of his dad — as a generation that’s all starting to probably have parents in nursing homes, that hit pretty well for someone who grew up with the original trilogy. It felt well-timed. I think it’s just that when you take a TV show and bring it to a movie, especially one in the Star Wars universe, it feels like it’s going to be bigger. And for me, there’s one specific moment in the movie where I thought, oh, okay, this is just TV episodes. Because for the entire show, Mando has been off on his own, doing his own thing, crossing paths with New Republic folks and sometimes helping them. We get to the point halfway through the movie where they’ve brought in Admiral Coyne, and he’s given Sigourney Weaver what she wants. Now she can do the thing the New Republic needs to do with this guy’s information. I thought: this is when we’re going to get the movie about the New Republic. This is when we’re going to get a movie that really dives into what the New Republic is up to and how Mando fits into it. And then he just went off to Nevarro, with no one in the theater having any idea what the plot was going to be next, because everything had been wrapped up — and then it just becomes another episode about the Hutts wanting revenge on him. I was really disappointed at that point in the theater. My overall thought is: I would have loved this to be a grander movie that took Mando and expanded the scope. It didn’t do that, and I’m disappointed. But that being said, I’m going to be perfectly happy throwing this on Disney+ sometime when I want some good Mando-Grogu feelings, because it gave us a lot of those.
Pete Wright
It’s interesting because I think I line up with the vibe of all three of you. The piece that I struggled with was that it felt exactly like what happened — that they had written about eight episodes of the show and then were told, “here’s a little more money, make it a movie,” and they just stapled it all together. It felt so deeply episodic and not like one coherent piece. When you get these episodes — like the little mechanic creatures and their teeny tiny spaceship, which was a really fun gag — I enjoyed that, but it felt small-screen aspirational. The fights felt flat. Everything felt a little flat. I also saw it in 3D, but it just felt energetically flat. The places where I was lost were unfortunately central to the film. I just could not abide Swole Hutt. Hutts are hard creatures. We’ve seen them tried again and again, and they’re hard. Walking through Nal Hutta where you have them slimy all over each other in their various dens — that was cool. Jeremy Allen White as Rotta — I have Favreau saying he recognizes it sounds like a mad lib, right? Jeremy Allen White is going to voice a swole Hutt. It sounds like nonsense. So either this is the dumbest thing Star Wars has done in a while, or it’s the biggest heroic swing they’ve ever made. Audiences seem deeply divided on that.
Ocean Murff
I like the Swole Hutt.
Pete Wright
Oh, Ocean. You like the Swole Hutt.
Ocean Murff
I’ve always been confused about why Jabba the Hutt is a big deal, because he’s this guy who can’t move and speaks in gibberish. Why don’t they just overthrow him? But if a Hutt could be like this when they’re younger — now I see it. They could have enforcer Hutts, a whole mob hierarchy. You have the enforcers, the money men, the bosses at the top. It looks like a much more well-rounded society. I will own that it felt weird to me that he was speaking English.
Justin Jaeger
That was the part that was really difficult for me. One line hit me especially hard: when he said, “I want to be my own man.” Oh my god. Even if you’re going to give him English, he still wouldn’t identify himself as a man. That just hit me like a ton of bricks in the theater. It was tough enough to accept the accent as a Hutt, and then to do that — I was like, what are you guys writing here?
Matthew Fox
I don’t think you need a Hutt to be physically strong to have power — that’s always been kind of the point of the universe. I definitely don’t mind Swole Hutt. For me it’s the English and the emo. Lines like “I want to be my own man” and complaining about his dad. One of the things I loved about A New Hope, and this carries through most of the original trilogy — Lucas talked about wanting this — is that aliens have different vocal cords and different lungs. We can’t make the sounds a dog makes, and a dog can’t speak English, because we have different vocal systems. One of the conceits of that original universe is that Jabba, Chewbacca, Greedo — none of them speak English because they’re not human, but our human characters can understand them. And it works. I know they’ve moved away from subtitles, especially in movies made more for kids, but if Jeremy Allen White’s character is going to speak Basic, I would at least have wished that the two older Hutts, the twins, only spoke Huttese. When they were speaking a little bit of Basic, at least they seemed to be struggling with it. Pick one or the other. The character of the Hutt who doesn’t want to be a Hutt, the one who has a voice and an emo character — to me there are so many other species you could have gone with that aren’t so classically non-human. You could have even had it be a Twi’lek — if you want to be from the Hutt clans, you could have had it be a Twi’lek woman. Congratulations — you’ve just increased the number of women in this movie a hundred percent. The Swole part was a little weird, but it’s really the emo-ness. It just didn’t make sense to me.
Pete Wright
Some of the choices are what really get me. The filmmakers worked really hard to make this a practical film — so many of the central character choices are practical choices, and Grogu is absolutely not the least of them. Then we have this central character in Jeremy Allen White that they chose to make a Hutt. We know how hard Hutts are to make universally believable on screen. Jabba was the last time, and it was a puppet. They did not go in that direction. This is an own goal — they chose to write a character who was a Hutt and felt like they wanted to make this swing. But the bigger problem I have with this movie is not one this movie can fix. The powers that be at Lucasfilm went to the Star Wars stable and said, okay, we’re going to adapt one of our TV shows for the big screen. We have The Mandalorian. We have Andor. Let’s make the Mandalorian and the puppet movie, because it sells lunchboxes. That’s my headcanon. What I wanted was a season-one Mandalorian. What I got was the Lunchbox Mandalorian, post-Book of Boba Fett. I’ve got to go back and watch Andor again for the Star Wars I want right now. This one was action without a lot of pulse.
Ocean Murff
I agree they’re just trying to sell lunchboxes. But if they wanted to make a real Star Wars movie and go in a different direction, they could have grabbed The Acolyte. That, while not necessarily the most successful show, gave you a lot of difference. You could have an adventure story, you could go a lot of different directions and make it cinematic. And there was nothing practical in this movie. It was all fake things dealing with fake things. Even to the point of the acting — when the Mandalorian and Colonel Ward, Sigourney Weaver’s character, are together talking, the dialogue feels so stilted and disjointed. I was sitting there questioning whether they were in the same room. According to them online they were, but I was like, maybe you should have done something a little bit better, because it just didn’t work. And that was the only time the Mandalorian interfaced with an actual person — when he was with Colonel Ward.
Pete Wright
And he’s on the ship with Zeb. It’s all CGI replacement, all CGI voice acting.
Ocean Murff
There are a lot of problems with the structure and with what they decided to do. But I will concede — I did enjoy it. There are a lot of positives. The action sequences were bigger than the show. The fight sequences were bigger than the show. It tried to add a little bit to his character, but it made the wrong turn of having him go back and fight the Hutts as opposed to continuing on to something larger. That’s just another point of evidence of how Star Wars is better as a TV show. They should stop making movies altogether and just make TV shows. They could have run The Mandalorian for a decade — it’s voice acting, stuntmen, puppets, and CGI everywhere. You’re not dealing with actors who became big deals and are now much more expensive. Television is where Star Wars should focus. The shows are much better than the movies — arguably we peaked at Rogue One and we’re done.
Matthew Fox
I do want to push back, because I am looking forward to seeing more movies. Yes, take a bunch of adults and ask them about the sequel trilogy and you’ll have one hell of a debate — some people who really only liked one or two, some who hate all of them, all the people who want to say Disney Star Wars is bad and woke, which is nonsense. But to me, that reminds me of how we all talked about the prequels for a long time.
Justin Jaeger
If you weren’t of the age that grew up with the prequels —
Matthew Fox
Right. And then all the kids who grew up with the prequels came out, and they loved them, and they taught us to love them. The Clone Wars taught us to love them. The generation that grew up with the sequels is becoming young adults now. I think that’s what’s going to carry a lot of the next stage of the movies, because there is a cohort that has very strong positive feelings about the sequels. And here’s what I think the strategy of this movie may be — it’s trying to capture lightning in a bottle twice. When people look at The Force Awakens today, which is not the best Star Wars movie, they forget that Star Wars needed a palate cleanser. There was so much prequel hate out there, people had written off Star Wars. The fan discussions right now are so toxic. I would have loved an Acolyte movie, and would have had to stay off Twitter for three weeks because of it. This was such a basic, simple movie, and we all wanted more from it. But if it opens the door back to Star Wars movies, I’m okay. I’m nervous about it, but I think that may have been their strategy. They could have done it a lot better and shouldn’t have just taken three episodes, but I think they had so many other film projects canceled that this was their “we just need to do something.”
Pete Wright
I’m with you, actually. I’m on board for Star Wars on the big screen and I’m very much looking forward to Starfighter. I think that has real potential for my inner nerd. But this one had some things. Let’s walk through some of the action beats. The movie opens with the scene from the trailer — they’re on the snowy planet, and Mando is collecting Imperial Warlords by cards. Nice little throwback. That opening sequence — I think the trailer turned a lot of people off, but I actually had fun with it. I thought it was great.
Ocean Murff
That was great. It also demonstrated, yet again, that walkers are not good machines. But why is there still a walker on the side of the mountain?
Matthew Fox
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Justin Jaeger
What a terrible choice.
Matthew Fox
I am a little curious that a small handheld grenade has more power than the blasters on those Rebel scout ships, but we can move on.
Pete Wright
Things happen. I liked the setup — it sets up the lone wolf and cub kind of cleverness between these two. We then meet Sigourney Weaver. Nobody was surprised Sigourney was in the movie, presumably. How did it hit you that her role as a New Republic commander and sometime star pilot —
Justin Jaeger
It really felt like stunt casting to me. It wasn’t a character other than the fact that it was Sigourney Weaver. Every time she’s on screen I’m just thinking, “oh, Sigourney Weaver’s talking to the Mandalorian.” That’s how I felt the whole time. I don’t need that for that character. There’s nothing she could have done to take me out of that mindset. I need a different type of actor in that character.
Matthew Fox
Right, because it wasn’t a character. It was an NPC that gives him his next mission. That was partly why I thought we were going to get a movie about Mando and the New Republic in the second half — because it’s Sigourney Weaver. Now, having seen how much Daredevil and the MCU wasted her in The Defenders, I probably should have seen it coming. She got to have some plot there — she had all this history with Elektra. Here, if you think about what makes a character — her arc, how is she different from any other generic New Republic officer? No idea. And if you’re already going to hire Paul Sun-Hee, the guy from Kim’s Convenience who plays Carson Teva, the New Republic person who already has a fun dynamic with Mando — why not have him do it?
Pete Wright
He’s barely in this. Yeah.
Ocean Murff
He’s just sitting in an X-wing and then cheers. They should have thrown in a character you had some history with, because you want to believe the hardness of Sigourney Weaver when she says, “well, if you don’t like it, I’ve got nothing for you, move on.” That just doesn’t hit. The acting doesn’t hit at all. It seems to be there as a plot device to get him to the next place. If it’s just going to be stunt casting, why not name her Colonel McGuffin? You could have just said “Colonel McGuffin gets us to the next place, perfect.”
Matthew Fox
The greatest example of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” — Martin Scorsese as the informant, eating crow while serving up food and secrets. I was so angry when he said all that stuff about Star Wars not being real cinema. It made me so happy to see him going, “fine, these are good movies, I’ll be in them” — although this wasn’t — but I thought he was a fun character. He portrays how scary these people are through how much he doesn’t want to talk, but also kind of does. That was a character. I knew what this guy was, I knew his motivations, I knew why he didn’t want to help the Mandalorian and why he did. He had a character written for him, the way Sigourney didn’t.
Ocean Murff
He was very entertaining and great. I love the end — he’s trying not to take the credits because he doesn’t want anything to come of it, and then he realizes he’s been asked for a famous hat, and he goes, “oh yeah, he’s right over there,” and then takes all the money. I really enjoyed that interaction. I was a little disappointed that he didn’t come back later, because I thought maybe there was a reason for it. But once they leave that world it doesn’t make any sense for him to return. It was great stunt casting. I know him best from Shark Tale as the blowfish.
Pete Wright
It took me a minute to realize the blowfish is not talking — it’s a different character.
Ocean Murff
I’ve seen that movie way too many times. My children were the right age for me to see it a lot.
Justin Jaeger
My hot take on that character is that if we ever get a movie of Scorsese’s life, we should use that character and give it the Robbie Williams Better Man treatment. That character actually embodies amazing things about Marty Scorsese. He’s got all these angles — very aggressive, very smart, very clever, with that undercurrent of fear. We just discovered Martin Scorsese’s avatar in this movie.
Pete Wright
That takes us to the planet Shikari, where we have the saloon walk-in. The fight sequence on the planet that mines salt — I really enjoyed that. If anything, it happened too fast. Mando is looking for one of the cards, doesn’t know the name or the face, and the first place he goes is the place where he finds the guy. Plot armor. But we get a great saloon brawl — Mando gets beaten on, beats up, throws people around, uses the fire in his gauntlets. That’s the kind of brawler I was looking for.
Matthew Fox
Dropping the salt crystal in the guy’s drink when they’ve established that it’s super valuable — loved it.
Ocean Murff
Beautiful. Yeah, I don’t know why the guy didn’t immediately dump the salt out, but other than that — yes, that was a high point. I really enjoyed all of it. Even the conversation that gets us to Rotta, with the big mob boss Janu Coyne. I appreciated that it had meaning — it brought us to the next place and didn’t feel ham-fisted. It felt of a piece. The fight sequences were big. And then it felt like we were going to move on to a greater adventure in the gladiator arena.
Pete Wright
And then the gladiator arena happened.
Justin Jaeger
I actually liked the gladiator arena. Once again, I am an island.
Matthew Fox
No, you’re not. I was so sick of monsters by then.
Justin Jaeger
It wasn’t the monsters I liked. What I liked is that, in terms of the story, there was a belief that you could hold the monsters in. And then exactly what I wanted to happen — happened. They get out and attack the people who thought they could control them. That was the comeuppance I wanted for that whole environment.
Pete Wright
Yeah, satisfying — down with organized crime, state-sponsored crime. Yeah.
Matthew Fox
When they let the cage open, one of my biggest complaints was that it felt like we went backwards with Mando’s character. It’s weird, because you said you wanted the vibes of season one — I felt like we got the season-one character, not the season-three character. In season one, he is very much devil-may-care, just out for himself. Season-one Mando would take a guy he thought he was rescuing, who now says he doesn’t want to be rescued, and say, “I don’t care, I’m taking you in hot or cold.” I don’t believe the character who ended season three would do that — but he does. And even when Rotta appeals to him and says, “hey, please don’t do this,” it’s only when Rotta says “I have a better way to achieve your goal” that he changes. Similarly, this Mandalorian, to me, would have said, “okay, let’s round up these monsters and stop all these people on this planet from getting killed.” Instead they just — alright, we’re out, peace.
Ocean Murff
Once he learned Rotta was going to die, he was initially fine letting him go, letting him have his last fight. But then when he goes and talks to Admiral Coyne and finds out Rotta is going to die — now he’s like, I’m going to take him in hot or cold. Which I think is also because he realizes: if Rotta dies here, I don’t get my bounty.
Matthew Fox
Oh sure, but he let him go instead of bringing him back to the aunt and uncle who were going to kill him themselves. That’s the part that felt off for this character.
Pete Wright
It led to — I’m already not quite sold on the cage fight anyway. It looked strange and flat energetically. And then it led to what has now become the tropiest of Star Wars tropes, the highway action sequence. That was some of the longest minutes of the film, getting to the other side of it. The movie recognized it’s not made for me, but this was rough. The movie gets its legs again when it slows down. I’ll skip a major sequence because I want to make sure we don’t miss the episode of this movie: Grogu the Caretaker. The movie slows way down. We’re in a swamp. Grogu’s instinct is to build a hovel out of mud. The beats of Grogu taking care of the now-poisoned Mando are some of the best in the movie for me. I thought the movie was going to end. I thought it was over. And then it went into this sequence of, I don’t know, twenty minutes of wandering around the forest, and I was in it. For the first time I forgot it was a puppet.
Matthew Fox
I could have done without the fish man from Deliverance. If you’re going to have that character, give him a banjo — go all the way. But other than him, I thought that sequence was brilliant. I teared up at some parts. That perfect mix of deeply emotional — and then he’s taking Mando into the shelter to keep him safe, and Mando bangs his head on the doorway, again and again. That is Mando’s best: that mix of emotion and humor.
Justin Jaeger
I liked those sections too. This goes back to my original comment about the cotton candy aspects — I liked them because of where they show up. I even liked the highway chase tropes, Pete — visually speaking, the transport sequences, whether it’s the highway chase or traveling through space, were kind of fun. But if you take a step back and start thinking about the story in any of these cases, especially this twenty-minute segment, it is riddled with deus ex machina. Why would the fish-Deliverance man help Grogu? Why does the hunter actually tell the fisherman all the details he needs to know to help Grogu help Mando? Story-wise, it doesn’t work. But it was a sweet segment that worked really well. This is the piece that reinforces my initial comment: yes, the tropes are here, but I like this universe so much that it didn’t bother me in most cases.
Ocean Murff
I think maybe I agree and disagree at the same time. For me this also reinforced why I think it should be a television show. Every part of the movie up to here, they’ve gone bigger — good action sequences, fine, that’s good movie time. But the part of the movie I cared about is this part, when they really start getting into the relationship of Din Djarin and Grogu, what their interactions are, the role reversal where Grogu is taking care of him and communicating all of this nonverbally. My favorite ten minutes of this movie have no real dialogue. A TV show can breathe. You can let things be episodic. Whereas in a movie, we’ve been here for about seven minutes, so we need to wrap it up. I even appreciated how, when Grogu was taking care of him, he was still respecting Din Djarin’s tradition and just lifted his helmet up enough to shove the water in — where it would have been much easier to just pop it off. He still respected his beliefs and tried to take care of him in that way. This was the best part of the movie.
Justin Jaeger
And I’d call it the best episode of this season of The Mandalorian.
Matthew Fox
Especially because if it were a TV show, it wouldn’t have had the most clearly tacked-on thing, which is the X-Wing battle. It feels like someone handed in the script and then a higher-level producer said, “this is a Star Wars movie, we have to have an X-Wing battle.” So they literally waited until the movie was over and then put in an X-Wing battle. Because the Hutts die — we have that scene of the door opening. Am I the only one who was convinced it was going to be the Zillo Beast? The movie’s over, the Hutts are done. And instead it’s more droids fighting. I don’t know why, because their masters are dead. And then we have an X-Wing battle. It literally felt like someone checked the box. I love it — I love X-Wings and TIE Fighters, I want to see that again, especially if you’re not giving me lightsabers. But one of the moments when I first realized this wasn’t going to be the movie I wanted was when one of the best shots of the trailers — the X-Wings against the sunset — turns out to just be a moment in the credits. That’s not part of the story. They just put it in the trailer.
Pete Wright
Did the credits feel weirdly cheap? Like, the opening credits felt like I’m watching Knight Rider.
Ocean Murff
I was thinking the beginning of Top Gun. Yeah, it felt like that.
Matthew Fox
I think it’s the first Star Wars movie that had credits at the front, right? Didn’t George Lucas get sued, which is why he started doing them himself — because he wouldn’t put credits at the start of Empire, and then he started doing his own thing with Jedi? Something like that.
Pete Wright
Maybe — I know there was controversy. It’s important to note that the movie has something thematic to say. The entire Mando and Grogu relationship is about fathers and sons — about parents and children, chosen identity versus inherited legacy, and in this case mercy as a moral pivot in this post-Empire galaxy. Those are fascinating things for a movie like this to even attempt to address. The fact that we get just a little of it in that part of the movie is really quite touching. Also — the bounty hunter looking for the bounty hunter. Eb, Ebo, Enzo, Embo? Embo. I don’t know much of Embo. I need a brief tutorial, Matthew. Can you tell me why I know Embo? And his wicked, scary dog?
Matthew Fox
There’s not much known about him except that he’s a complete badass, and in this movie he did a good job of being exactly that. He is very much a hunter rather than just someone who goes to find you. Boba Fett is, like, I’m going to fight my way to you. Embo — especially with his wolfhound — his ship is called the Guillotine. He comes from The Clone Wars. That’s where we really get to know him. He very rarely speaks. He’s super badass and super scary. His helmet is blasterproof, as we’ve seen in this film. He’s just a cool fighter.
Justin Jaeger
This is very much like Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace — the coolest villain has far more charisma than the star, unfortunately. I’m way more interested in everything you just said, Matthew, than in everything I learned about the Mandalorian in that movie. One of my complaints about The Mandalorian is that when Pedro’s not visible, it’s always a stunt person, right?
Matthew Fox
Pretty much, yeah.
Justin Jaeger
Something about the suit and the way it shows up on the actor — whether it’s Pedro or the stunt person — makes them walk in a way that’s not awesome. I don’t know how else to say it. Embo stood in a way that demanded respect. This Mandalorian, whoever is walking in the suit, doesn’t know how to walk with the uniform. I miss Boba Fett and the way Boba used to walk in the original movies. There’s something missing in terms of the charisma. You’re supposed to be the coolest person everywhere you go.
Matthew Fox
And one tiny thing that doesn’t matter but has been bothering me. Let’s say there’s one Russian kid who comes to your high school, and you know him well, so you call him Rusky.
Justin Jaeger
Yeah.
Matthew Fox
But then that friend goes out into the rest of the world, especially with a lot of other Russian people now coming out into the world.
Justin Jaeger
Yes.
Matthew Fox
And they all call you Rusky. Why are they calling him Mando? He is one of many Mandalorians now in this universe. Why in the world would Sigourney Weaver call him Mando? No.
Pete Wright
I agree. That is on par with the “what are they doing speaking so much English” challenge I have with this movie. It takes me out of the universe. And yet, Pascal in the fight against the dragon snake was one of my favorite sequences of the film. Quite liked it in terms of fake things dealing with fake things. I like the interpretation of the native soldier species that has their face in the water all the time. They’re weird. I guess every Hutt has a trapdoor right in front of their throne and maybe these guys should know to go around the circle. That was a little on the nose, but I still had a good time with that fight. Did anybody think when the snake rose up — where was it? When Mando falls underwater, where was the snake? I don’t care, I just wish somebody could answer.
Matthew Fox
The level of done-ness I had with monsters by that point in the movie. I watched it with a bunch of people, and I literally said “oh, come on” when it emerged. Because — we just fought another monster. So many monsters. Now we have the wet rancor. We just had the other rancors. Can we just be done? Everyone in my row at the theater was like — yeah, we get it. I hope it sells some toys, and I bet in the video game it’s going to be really fun to fight.
Ocean Murff
Totally. Part of what I think the issues are, even the ones we’re seeing with it, is partly because of the pacing — you notice these things in real time. Like, I’m watching the X-Wing battle at the end with all the droids, and in real time, because of the pacing, I’m thinking, “why are they fighting? I don’t know.” Several beats are like this. In a faster-paced movie, you shouldn’t even have thought about where the snake was living. And I didn’t think about it either, until I now realize — when Mando was fighting the original ones, he was standing in water. So where would a snake this size live in water you can stand in? There are just a lot of these little pieces that are maybe good ideas in a vacuum, but when you put them all together, they don’t quite work out. I enjoy the pieces. I just don’t think it makes a good meal.
Justin Jaeger
One of the things I liked about those pieces is that when I first saw X-Men 2 on screen, it reminded me a lot of the comic book. What a lot of individual pieces in The Mandalorian remind me of are the end sequences for the TV show episodes where it shows you concept art. The snake shot — Pedro way off to the left, the big snake showing up on the right — that reminded me of that. I loved that as an homage to the TV show. I felt the same way about the music. The whole first sequence and getting back to the themes — great. And they even took some risks, took us out of the established Star Wars sound to deliver some new music. I liked it. It felt like a turn. So all of those pieces that they brought from the TV show and put on display in a cinematic way got me excited about this movie.
Pete Wright
Ludwig Göransson did the music for this, and the last film he scored was Sinners. This composer is a composer of the ages — Oppenheimer, all of The Mandalorian. He did the show too.
Matthew Fox
And Ryan Coogler won’t do a movie without him. He also did Creed 2, he did Black Panther.
Justin Jaeger
So I’m making that Marvel comparison — it felt a lot like Black Panther to me, in a great way. Let’s take this cool music and evolve it to the next level.
Pete Wright
One of the really cool things you can get on Apple Music, I presume Spotify — on Göransson’s page, they released each of the episodes of The Mandalorian as its own album. You can get Chapter One, Chapter Two — it’s all his original music. It is just stunning. Really, really good. For me, that’s the home run of the movie — the composition was just gorgeous.
Ocean Murff
Look, the music was good, but the home run of the movie is the adventures of Grogu. If you take that out, this is a series of fight scenes with no heart. That section makes the entire movie for me. The rest of it is just interchangeable action clips. The ability to control things with the Force — even pushing Mando, him banging his head against the wall — great. All of the development of Grogu’s character and his journey was a really great part of this. The main thing I attached to. That’s the reason I’ll watch it again. The rest of it — if the clips are on somewhere I’ll watch. But the reason I’m going to watch this again is for those scenes.
Pete Wright
We’re all parents with children, and watching the relationship of the Mandalorian and Grogu in this movie just had me reflecting on how awesome it would have been if my kids had the Force. That would have been incredible. It’s a fantasy piece for me. Maybe the movie was made for me.
Matthew Fox
It’s also magic markers floating around the room riding on walls without having to control them, so.
Pete Wright
Fair. Well, we’ve got to get to our final verdict. Over at Letterboxd — we use stars and hearts to make our mark, and this is the way. Ocean, where do you sit?
Ocean Murff
I’m pretty in the middle, so I’m going to go three stars and a Grogu. Because Grogu is the heart of this movie. I like more of it than I don’t like, but I feel that it robbed me of a television show. I want seasons four, five, six, and seven. That’s where I think it would really thrive.
Justin Jaeger
Three stars and a heart as well. It sounds like a contradiction to my character or the way I feel about these movies — I refused to see the new Avatar movies, you know, this type of thing. But I just like the Star Wars universe more than those universes. I will go see it again. I have all these quibbles, but it’s enjoyable.
Pete Wright
Matthew?
Matthew Fox
I think I’m probably two and a half to three stars. When I judge a Star Wars movie, I have to think about two things: how do I feel watching it, and how does it contribute to my overall thoughts about the Star Wars universe? I think there are only two bad Star Wars movies — Attack of the Clones and Rise of Skywalker, for very different reasons. But if I want to re-watch Star Wars, I’ll watch those because to me they’re essential parts of the story. I’m probably not going to re-watch Solo, because it doesn’t feel like an essential immersion into the universe. I like Solo a lot more than this, but I’m not going to re-watch it as “I need to immerse myself in everything Star Wars.” This is going to be that for me. If I’m doing a Mandalorian re-watch, I’ll end it with this. Not having the expectations I came in with, I’ll probably enjoy it a lot more. I don’t think I’ll pay for it in theaters, but I’ll wait until it’s on Disney+ and probably enjoy it quite a bit more. As a movie, it’s three stars. As a Star Wars movie, it’s two and a half stars.
Pete Wright
That’s absolutely fair. I think we’re all right around the same middle. I’m going to give it the Grogu boost — three stars and a heart. You guys have softened me a little bit, because I came in harder. I came in more disappointed about Swole Hutt. That’s just so dumb. I can’t with the axes.
Matthew Fox
It’s the “oh, my dad” of it all. Poor Rotta.
Pete Wright
I know. That is such a ding against this movie. And Jeremy Allen White — I look forward to really great things from him.
Matthew Fox
Besides The Bear. I wonder if Jeremy Allen White is about to be in a Scorsese movie.
Pete Wright
They come in duos. Do we have any guidance on what is going to happen with The Mandalorian as a property? Is there any news about coming back for a season five after this?
Matthew Fox
I can speak to that a little. They’ve obviously been doing a number of things in this time period — among other things, trying to fill in the gaps to the sequels the way The Clone Wars did for the prequels. A lot of The Mandalorian has been about chasing Imperials who are trying to do cloning, which is obviously setting up what becomes Snoke and becomes Palpatine. One thing I liked about this movie was that it avoided the MCU phase-two problem, where random movies just had scenes stuck in to set up Age of Ultron. Later this year or early next, we’re going to get Ahsoka season two. That’s the show where we’re going to get a big fight between the New Republic and the Imperial remnants under Thrawn. I would have liked this movie to set that up a little bit. I was worried it would force it in awkwardly, like the MCU did. I was glad it didn’t. But that’s our next big project set in this time period. And I think Garazeb is absolutely going to be a big part of that, which is why he was introduced in this movie. He was on screen for about five seconds in an Ahsoka episode, but this is the first time he really had some character. And by the way, he’s one of my favorite Rebels characters — I loved him and wanted more of him. I also thought Hondo was going to come out of that cantina, but that’s another story. That’s going to be the next time we get something in this time period. Ahsoka has been very much about the Force and people’s different attitudes toward it, and Ahsoka and Grogu have a connection. It’s very possible there’s some kind of overlap there. We know that Grogu has rejected being a Jedi — he wants to be a Mandalorian. But depending on how many episodes of Ahsoka we get, there could be some kind of big battle, or it leads into the Starfighter movie, which I think is also set in this time period. In which case Mando and Grogu are kind of like the Guardians of the Galaxy to the Avengers — off on the edge, okay.
Pete Wright
I like that. We’ve just made a movie I’m really excited to watch.
Ocean Murff
Honestly, at this point — Matthew, you should be in charge. You should run it, because they’re not smart enough to do all that. You have my vote. I want you running the Star Wars universe.
Matthew Fox
Because I want to see what you just said. The first thing I do is hand the keys to Rian Johnson. And for some reason I don’t understand, some people don’t think he’s good for Star Wars.
Pete Wright
I’m in that camp too.
Matthew Fox
I wanted The Last Jedi and The Acolyte all the way down. Give me those two and Andor.
Pete Wright
A hundred percent.
Matthew Fox
Can I close with just one sad little thing? Anytime there’s something like this, I know there’s always the balance of how do you make the people who love the show happy without making people feel like they have to do homework to watch the movie. I get that most of the stuff from the show wasn’t going to carry over — we didn’t get anything about the other Mandalorians, Satine Kryze, and all that. But the one thing I thought would have been nice, both because of the show itself and the meta around it, is that one of Mando’s best friends was Greef Karga, who eventually became High Magistrate. He was played by Carl Weathers, who passed away. So obviously the character wasn’t going to be in here. But we went to Nevarro — the planet where he was High Magistrate — and we didn’t stay there very long. We already know they put up statues on that show — they did one of the IG droid. I would have loved to see a statue honoring Greef Karga in the movie, which to us is also honoring Carl Weathers — who was a huge part of the Rocky movies I loved as a kid, and who was part of what got me into Mandalorian season one. You don’t have to make a big deal of it for people who haven’t seen the show. I was just sad that there was no mention of Carl Weathers and Greef Karga.
Pete Wright
You’re absolutely right. It is exactly the kind of fan service I would have been down for.
Ocean Murff
And Matthew just gave us another point of why he should be running the Star Wars universe.
Pete Wright
Yep.
Ocean Murff
Disney, we’ll start the letter writing campaign after this.
Matthew Fox
I’m not making great money playing poker right now, but I think Disney could maybe make me a better offer.
Pete Wright
Well, go check out Matthew’s show, the Star Wars Generations podcast. There is a lot of in-depth stuff over there if you want more of exactly this kind of material and more on the lore of Star Wars. Star Wars Generations — you can find it wherever you find your podcasts or at TruStory.fm. And if you want to support the show, you can get access to all of the member-only extended versions of every episode we do with the TruStory FM family of shows, with one subscription. Subscribe at TruStory.fm/join. Thank you everybody. Thank you Ocean and JJ and Matthew for hanging out with me, for seeing this movie in the theater. On behalf of all of us, I’m Pete Wright. We’ll see you next month, right here on The Film Board. We have spoken.
