Did the pandemic and the streaming-glut era scramble everyone’s brains? Or, more specifically, did the people currently steering Lucasfilm suffer from long-term brain fog? Because the storytelling crisis that has plagued “Star Wars” lately—all plot, little character development, no real consequence, and a numbing amount of “here’s what happens next” chaptering—has not at all improved. Which brings us to “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the first “Star Wars” film to hit theaters in seven years, and a movie that is, unfortunately, exactly what it looks like: a two-hour episode of television with a bigger budget, bigger spectacle, and the same small-stakes/no-stakes storytelling where nothing significant happens, and almost nothing matters.
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Writer/director Jon Favreau famously revealed that he had already written “The Mandalorian” season four when Lucasfilm approached him about turning Mando and Baby Yoda’s next adventure into a feature film instead. That origin story hangs over nearly every minute of “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which feels like a three- or four-episode arc from that abandoned season, compressed into 120 minutes of spectacle, chase sequences, shootouts, a little mystery, and almost no substantial storytelling. Favreau and Lucasfilm haven’t just mistaken plot for story; they have stretched a mission briefing into a movie.
The bland, middling, inconsequential entry picks up, more or less, where season three left off. Din Djarin, now a New Republic work-for-hire bounty hunter, has reframed his old profession as a righteous cause. He is still tracking targets across the galaxy, only now he is doing it “for good,” hunting down illegally operating Imperial warlords and bringing them to justice.
If the marketing struggled to communicate what the movie is actually about, that is because there is barely a movie there to describe. There is a mission, an adventure, and a series of destinations. The Empire has fallen, but its remnants continue to operate independently. Enlisted to find one of these lingering factions, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal, who takes off his mask for all of one sequence) and his young apprentice Grogu are tasked by a New Republic colonel, Ward (Sigourney Weaver), with tracking down Janu (Jonny Coyne), the leader of one Imperial remnant faction, who remains unidentified. 
To complicate matters slightly—because apparently getting from point A to point B needed a point C—the film brings in the Hutts. Specifically, twin cousins of the deceased crime lord Jabba the Hutt, who know Janu’s secret location but will only hand it over if the New Republic rescues Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White), Jabba’s son, who has reportedly been kidnapped by nefarious forces.

When Mando finally finds Rotta, however, he discovers a slightly more complicated situation. He has been told that Rotta has been forced into indentured servitude, battling in underground fighting pits for the amusement of gangsters, but the reality is not quite so simple. It is more complicated in the plot sense, naturally, not the character sense.
Eventually, a clandestine bit of subterfuge emerges, and the Janu/Imperial-overlord portion of the movie effectively becomes a red herring. Instead, Mando, Grogu, Rotta, and New Republic pilot Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios—voiced by Steve Blum, in a winky cameo for fans of “Star Wars Rebels”—must face off against the Hutts. The attack plan is more involved than expected, which brings in another fan nod: Kyuzo bounty hunter Embo, whom hardcore fans will remember from “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” And yes, if that sounds a little bit like “Glup Shitto: The Movie”—the popular fandom joke about obscure “Star Wars” characters being treated like major events—well, it kind of is.
Ironically, the movie gets a little livelier when the Mandalorian is sidelined, a structural choice that is also among the strangest in the film. Narratively and rhythmically, the detour feels absurd, like a one-off episode shoved into the middle of a feature, and it immediately kills whatever momentum the movie had. Yet the passage itself—maybe 15 or 20 minutes of screen time—is one of the few sections with any actual spark. Grogu and the Anzellans, the tiny Babu Frik-like mechanics from “The Rise of Skywalker,” bounce around, act silly, coo in their indecipherable tones, and generally behave like the stars of a little silent comedy short. It is pointless, but it is also watchable and occasionally charming. Maybe they should have just made a 25-minute short film about these guys instead.

For all its scale, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” is visually flat and oddly unexciting. It is unclear how David Klein, best known for shooting several Kevin Smith films, landed this particular gig. Still, the movie rarely finds a memorable image or a sense of true cinematic grandeur. Even Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson seems to flail a bit. One sequence leans into an electro-dance score, but it feels tacked on and out of place, especially compared to the way “Andor” made a similar musical idea feel resonant and deeply connected to the moment.
The most striking thing about the movie, aside from its terribly tepid dialogue, may be the hubris, or the lack of self-awareness. Television is often passive storytelling; movies must be active. A feature needs shape, escalation, emotional build, and a reason to exist beyond brand maintenance. Favreau and his co-writers, Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, seem convinced they can simply port the mechanics of streaming television onto the big screen, scale up the budget, and assume audiences will be too distracted by the size of it all to notice. Or maybe they genuinely do not see the difference; it’s genuinely unclear.
That is especially strange given Lucasfilm’s recent history of nixing, delaying, or quietly shelving so many high-profile “Star Wars” projects because they were supposedly undercooked at the script stage: Patty Jenkins’ “Rogue Squadron,” James Mangold’s Boba Fett movie, Kevin Feige’s “Star Wars” film, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ trilogy, and Donald Glover’s “Lando,” which has bounced between series and movie form. Yet this two-hour trifle of a painfully thin screenplay somehow became the franchise’s grand theatrical return after nearly a decade away from theaters.
George Lucas used to describe “Star Wars” as a descendant of “Flash Gordon” serials, and he eventually leaned into that idea so far that the films themselves were retitled as episodes. The makers of “The Mandalorian and Grogu” appear to have taken that to heart. What they miss is that Lucas’ films, especially the original trilogy, were never just serial installments. They had character arcs, emotional stakes, mythic sweep, political undertones, allegorical weight, and an operatic sense of family, power, failure, and redemption. They were big fantasy adventures, yes, but they also carried the feeling of ancient archetypal stories being retold in a galaxy far, far away.

“The Mandalorian and Grogu” has callbacks, cameo-style appearances, lore breadcrumbs, fan-favorite supporting characters, and a reed-thin plot that moves constantly without really going anywhere. On paper, maybe it is about an heir to a throne—Rotta the Hutt—who refuses to become the man his father was: corrupt, violent, and defined by inherited power. But the movie never finds any poignancy in that idea. It simply has characters say the point out loud, over and over, in flat dialogue that amounts to, “I don’t want to be who my father was.” It is a Screenwriting 101 failure in the most literal sense: show, don’t tell, which these filmmakers seem to have forgotten.
For all its dull, forgettable, and sometimes egregious misjudgments, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” is not terrible, exactly. It is occasionally cute, occasionally funny, and sometimes harmlessly silly. But it is also completely disposable, and that may be worse. It is not really a movie so much as the next episode of “The Mandalorian,” a season-four arc crammed into one expensive feature and projected on the big screen. If a proper fourth season of “The Mandalorian” ever arrives, you could skip this chapter and barely miss a thing.
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“Star Wars” fans have spent years complaining that Kathleen Kennedy ruined Lucasfilm, but the reality looks broader and more dispiriting than one executive. This feels like a collective mistake, with Disney brass included: the dilution of a brand once defined by magical movie scale, mythical qualities, and a transportive emotional sweep. Somewhere along the way, “Star Wars” started mistaking brand extension for imagination and fan service for feeling. If Favreau and Filoni are the new stewards of this franchise, then the once-mighty galaxy probably has a bad feeling about its future. Because right now, it feels like it’s dangling over Cloud City, hand gone, saber lost, and no rescue in sight. Because this is definitely not the way. [C]