The Mandalorian and Grogu is facing a lot of pressure to refuel the sputtering franchise. Ever since the disastrous conclusion of the sequel trilogy with 2019’s Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars has been relegated to pumping out TV shows for Disney’s streaming platform. Now, the franchise is making a theatrical comeback with Jon Favreau’s feature-length continuation of his popular Star Wars series The Mandalorian.
Ahead of the film’s premiere on May 22, Disney invited a handful of journalists to watch the first 15 minutes of The Mandalorian and Grogu at IMAX headquarters in Los Angeles. Polygon was part of that group, making me one of the first people not employed by Lucasfilm to see anything beyond the trailers. While it was exciting to see Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, on the big screen, my first impression of the film is that it feels more like a Star Wars video game or a Netflix show than the blockbuster movie that’s going to return Star Wars to its former glory.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the first 15 minutes of The Mandalorian and Grogu.]
The Mandalorian and Grogu doesn’t begin with an opening crawl. Instead, we got a few sparse lines of text to set the scene and catch up any filmgoing audiences who never watched the Disney Plus show. (Although if you’re not caught up on The Mandalorian, you’re going to find this movie somewhat confusing.) In the aftermath of Return of the Jedi, the New Republic rebuilds in the ashes of the Empire. Meanwhile, our heroes hunt down surviving Imperial forces on the outskirts of the galaxy.
The story opens in one of those remaining Empire strongholds, where a mid-level crime boss is busy extorting his local syndicates. “I think we can all agree that things were better under the Empire,” he says, before leading his unenthusiastic clients in a chant of, “Long live the Empire!”
A second later, the unnamed crime boss shares some bad news: He’s raising prices for everyone paying for his protection. When one of the other criminals present points out they’re currently operating at a loss, while local trade routes are full of “pirates and thieves,” the mob boss shoots him dead. Then, before the meeting can end, Djarin shows up.
The eponymous Mandalorian bursts into the room with his usual flair, shooting flames across the floor to disarm a pair of hiding guards. The crime boss runs for an escape hatch, and Mando pursues him outside into the snowy mountains where Grogu is waiting.
Mando commandeers a two-legged AT-ST Walker and Grogu hops on. The camera pans down to reveal several AT-AT Walkers below. It looks like an establishing shot in a video game — and not just because the entire thing was likely created in Unreal Engine. Favreau points the camera purposefully at upcoming enemies and the path our heroes will have to travel to reach them. All that’s missing is a spinning auto-save icon.
Din rides the AT-ST down the mountain at a full sprint (I didn’t realize they were capable of that) and manages to destroy one of the AT-ATs from below. He then bursts into a second Walker and finds the mob boss, who hops into an escape pod that looks like a smaller AT-AT head and flies away. But Mando shoots him down and the pod explodes. Our heroes then escape via jetpack seconds before the AT-AT blows up, and they’re rescued by Zeb (a Chewbacca-esque alien from Star Wars: Rebels, voiced by Steve Blum) who’s flying their ship.
Zeb is clearly annoyed that they’re returning without a prisoner.
“You catch the bad guy so they tell us where the other bad guys are,” he says.
“Things went sideways,” Mando replies.
In the next scene, their ship lands on Adelphi, the planet from The Mandalorian where New Republic pilots like to hang out, and the gang heads to a cantina seen in the show. There, they meet up with their New Republic boss Ward (Sigourney Weaver). She calls Mando’s work “very messy” and complains that without proper information, they can’t figure out what the Empire is doing.
“I’ll take out every bad guy in your deck of cards,” Mando says, referencing her literal deck of Sabacc cards with villains printed on them (the sort of item you’d get handed in an open-world game as you unlock each new mission, although this plot detail is actually rooted in Star Wars canon).
Mando asks whether he’s still getting paid. Ward says yes and leads him outside. At this point, we get a credits sequence, as they walk through the shipyard in what feels like the opening of a Top Gun movie.
We reach the Razorcrest, which isn’t a repaired version of the ship our hero totaled back in The Mandalorian season 2 — it’s a different ship of the same model, which the New Republic seized from an Imperial commander. Mando notes that the ship is worth more than what he’s owed, and Ward says to consider it an advance on his next mission.
“Commander Coyne,” she expositions. “Our ace of spades. No one knows what he looks like, and most believe he’s dead.”
The Hutts have agreed to lead Mando to Coyne because ex-Imperials have imprisoned Rotta Hutt (Jeremy Allen White). Mando’s job is to free Rotta and then get the information needed to track down Coyne. (Disclaimer: It’s possible the movie’s big villain is actually called Commander Coin. I’m not sure how it’s spelled, but I’ve asked Disney to confirm.)
“I don’t work for gangsters anymore,” Mando replies, “especially the Hutts.”
In response, Ward essentially says: You work for me. He begrudgingly agrees.
While most of the footage I saw looked fine, if a little heavy on the CGI, this last exchange was particularly dull. Favreau shoots it in the same portrait-mode style framing as so many Netflix shows, with each character practically speaking to the camera against a blurry background that recreates the feeling of a Zoom meeting. That’s mildly annoying when you’re watching a mid-budget TV series on Disney Plus. For the first theatrical Star Wars movie in seven years, it’s downright unforgivable.
As our preview came to a close, a final sizzle reel showed a bunch more stuff without context, including Mando fighting a giant snake-monster and Grogu in a swamp that looks like Dagobah. (More on that in another article.)
From all this footage and some interviews that followed, it’s clear that Favreau and his team put a ton of work into bringing The Mandalorian and Grogu to the big screen. And while I’m hopeful that the rest of the movie will offer the kind of visuals and storytelling that the best Star Wars films excel at, nothing in this first 15 minutes makes me feel optimistic about the remaining two hours I still haven’t seen.
Maybe I’m being overly dramatic. After all, this is just the opening set-piece of a massive new movie that could easily redeem itself after an uneven start. Then again, opening scenes matter in Star Wars. Think of the hallway gunfight that kicks off A New Hope or the first 15 minutes of Empire Strikes Back. Heck, even the space battle at the start of Revenge of the Sith and Kylo Ren slaughtering randos on Mustafar in The Rise of Skywalker left an impact. By comparison, The Mandalorian and Grogu feels soulless and limp. I highly doubt that in another 50 years, Star Wars fans will talk about Mando taking down AT-AT Walkers the way they still do Luke Skywalker tangling with the Empire on Hoth.
Hopefully, I’m wrong. Star Wars really needs a win, but I’m still not convinced The Mandalorian and Grogu is it.
The Mandalorian and Grogu releases in theaters on May 22.
Disclosure: This article is based on a press event held in Los Angeles. Disney provided Polygon’s travel for the event. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
