QS stands for “Quickshot”, a series of short form review/preview/opinion articles.
For as massive a Star Wars fan as I am, it was inevitable that I would go out to theaters and see The Mandalorian and Grogu. How could I not see the new Star Wars flick on the big screen? That would be sacrilege!
The thing is, all the way up until I was sitting in my seat, watching the previews…it was a bit of a battle to muster up the enthusiasm to even want to go out and see the movie. Not that I was actively against the film. It was more like…indifference.
My opinions on The Mandalorian are, to I’m sure no one’s surprise, a bit contrarian. I found the first season to have a few highlights, but ultimately a bit middling. I remember even less of the second season, aside from the episode about Ahsoka, some sort of chase scene in a canyon that my brain kind of remembers, and that exceptionally-written confrontation with Bill Burr’s ex-imperial character and a really slimy officer guy.
The third season, however, I ended up being a pretty big fan of (one glaring, Jack Black infused episode aside). And if you know anything about The Mandalorian, you might know that the third season was primarily viewed as middling-at-best and bad-at-worst. So why did I end up enjoying it the most? It’s really no big mystery.
I ended up liking the show’s final season the most because it was the season that spent the most time telling one big, connected story. Instead of being an episodic sequence of little random events like the majority of the first two seasons, nearly all of the third season is slowly building up to one big plot and confrontation with the big bad. And it’s just my own personal taste to prefer a connected story rather than that adventure-of-the-week style. Nothing wrong with having a preference for the episodic stuff, but I’m someone who really craves the bigger stories.
But my point with this preamble is to say that the episodic nature of most of The Mandalorian really wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, and that’s exactly what The Mandalorian and Grogu looked like it was going to be. A movie made out of the bones of two random theoretical episodes of the show. Low stakes. Minimal story. Little-to-no lasting impact on both the viewer and the audience after the credits roll. The trailers didn’t inspire much more excitement in me either.
Still, I love Star Wars, and I just couldn’t resist the allure of visiting that galaxy so far away in a theater.
And, uh…yeah. The movie was exactly what I thought it would be.
And yet, as a general rule, I consider myself someone who always finds the fun in things. So while I’d hesitate to use a word like ‘great‘ to describe the movie (maybe, maybe I would use ‘good enough‘), I did have fun, and don’t regret my time (or money) with regards to seeing the movie in theaters.
The film follows our titular duo of grizzled bounty hunter dad and precocious green goblin as they help out the New Republic with some JRPG-esque sidequests. Predictably, things go awry, and chaotic antics and action scenes ensue. That’s genuinely all there is to it, and there is a palpable feeling throughout the movie that you’re watching about two or three episodes of the original show stapled together into the form of a movie.
For example, there’s an opening scene that involves taking down an Imperial warlord. It’s a fun scene, and definitely creative in terms of how the action is executed. But it’s also just a blip on the radar of the film as a whole. And I’m not just talking about how the trailers made the moment seem like it might be related to the main plot (though I could talk about that misplaced misdirect of a marketing tactic). I just mean that the scene is cool, but it just sort of exists to exist.
That’s about the long-and-short of the entire movie, really. We move from one scene to the next, and have plenty of fun moments and engaging fighting and shooting to go with it. But the plot is razor-thin, there aren’t really any grand character arcs or moments of big development, and you can just about surmise how everything will end within a few minutes of the film beginning. Neither does the film leave a massive lasting impact once it ends.
I will give the movie credit for a really unexpected pace change in the final act. I actually think it’s so sudden it might sour the opinion’s of some less patient viewers. But the film really does grind to a halt for nearly ten minutes of a much quieter, introspective, and interesting movie. Don’t misread that as an attack against the rest of the movie, it’s just that the rest of the movie could be described as ‘safe‘ and ‘predictable‘, whereas those ten minutes were a really nice and welcome surprise.
Also, since we’re leaning a bit more positive with this review, there’s a big action scene that sort of closes out the first act of the film, and it’s awesome. There are some really unique designs for the aliens and creatures, the fight choreography is inventive and exciting, and the soundtrack in that scene is incredible. It might sound like a bit of a weird description, but the music in that scene really sounds like a Star Wars version of the sort of big band music you’d hear at a football game. It’s some really fun stuff.
And the soundtrack, by the way, is really good. No big surprise there, as basically anything in the Star Wars franchise has good music, but it’s still relieving that this movie doesn’t break the tradition. The tunes are very nice, and it’s hard not to smile when the somehow-already-nostalgic theme of The Mandalorian kicks in.
Additionally, there was one character who I had nothing but indifference towards going into the movie, and they ended up being a surprising highlight of the film. They aren’t going to crack my theoretical list of favorite Star Wars characters, but they were pretty cool and I enjoyed the scenes that they were in.
But amidst the notable positive highlights and the general sense of ‘okay-ness‘, there are also a few abject downsides to the film. The lack of any sort of impactful antagonist is a huge letdown, both in terms of memorability and also driving the plot forward. The pacing is a bit awkward, and the ‘and then this other thing happens‘ style of the narrative almost makes it hard to settle in and just watch the movie. And even when you’re as positive-minded as I am, it can get hard to shake a sensation of wondering what the movie’s purpose in existing is.
Ultimately, though…it’s fine. I had fun, and I’m sure you will too if you haven’t seen the movie and you have the right expectations going into it.
But it’s also probably in your best interest to just wait a few months for the film to come out on Disney+.
7/10
The Contrarian Corner 