'Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu' Review: Solid jump to the Big-Screen for Mando and Grogu
- May 19
- 5 min read
By Dan Bremner - May 19, 2026
Seven years since the last Star Wars theatrical film, and the intervening period has not been kind to the franchise's reputation. The Disney+ content that replaced cinema as the primary delivery mechanism for a galaxy far far away has been, to put it charitably, a deeply mixed bag, ranging from the genuinely excellent Andor to some of the more dispiriting television the brand has ever produced. The Mandalorian itself, one of the streaming era's genuine early highlights, spent its third season losing the plot in ways that felt almost deliberately designed to test the loyalty of its most devoted viewers. The film arrives carrying all of that baggage plus the additional challenge of convincing an audience that has spent seven years being told Star Wars lives on streaming that it belongs back in a cinema. It's a lot to ask, especially with the clunky title Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. The fact that it mostly delivers, while never fully transcending its own limitations, is both a genuine relief and a mild frustration given what the resources and talent involved could theoretically have produced.
The plot centres on Din and Grogu being tasked with rescuing Rhotta the Hutt, played by a very ripped Jeremy Allen White (with a heavily modulated voice) in what is either the most inspired or most baffling piece of casting the franchise has ever produced, possibly both simultaneously. White brings an intensity and physical presence to what could easily have been a purely comedic role and the film is smart enough to use him in ways that justify the casting rather than simply winking at its own absurdity. The mission structure gives the film a clean and propulsive forward momentum that the third season of the show catastrophically lacked, moving from set piece to set piece with the confident pace of something that knows exactly what it wants to be and has no interest in stopping to explain itself.
For the first two acts this works beautifully, the film rattling along at a genuinely exhilarating clip that makes the runtime feel considerably shorter than it is and generates the kind of pure escapist momentum classic Star Wars always delivered at its best. Then the third act arrives and the steam starts to noticeably escape. The final stretch loses the propulsive energy of what preceded it, settling into a series of resolutions and conclusions that feel slightly deflating after the kinetic confidence of the opening hour and half, and the inconsequential nature of the central mission, which is fun and self-contained but never generates truly high stakes or genuine dramatic weight, becomes more apparent when the pace drops enough to notice it. It is the kind of plot that works entirely in motion and reveals its thinness the moment it slows down, which is perhaps the most Star Wars thing imaginable.
The most immediately striking thing about The Mandalorian and Grogu on an IMAX screen is how genuinely cinematic it feels, which sounds like a low bar and is not meant as one. The visual scale is a legitimate step up from the television material, with creature design, production values and set pieces that clearly justify the theatrical format in ways the trailers only partially suggested. Jon Favreau as director is a reliable and unfussy pair of hands who keeps everything moving with confidence and ensures the action sequences register at the scale the format demands. Ludwig Göransson's score is an absolute highlight throughout, particularly in its synth-driven moments that really shred.
Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin remains an enormously appealing screen presence even with his face entirely concealed for the vast majority of the runtime, conveying warmth, weariness and occasional dry humour through body language and voice with a consistency that continues to impress. The decision to keep the film relatively self-contained and accessible without requiring encyclopaedic knowledge of the television series or extensive Glup Shitto cameos designed to service continuity at the expense of storytelling is the single most intelligent creative choice the film makes, and it pays dividends throughout. This feels more like the first two seasons of the show than anything produced in the intervening years, which is exactly what it needed to feel like. We even get a delightful cameo role from a fast-talking Martin Scorsese and a small part for the ever reliable Sigourney Weaver.
Then there is Grogu, who is both the film's greatest weapon and its most cynically deployed one. The puppeteering work is extraordinary, producing a character of such genuine expressiveness and physical specificity that the emotional beats land with a consistency that should not be possible from what is essentially a very sophisticated prop. The father-son dynamic between Din and Grogu remains the franchise's most reliable source of genuine warmth and the film understands this completely, building its best moments around their relationship rather than the broader galactic mechanics. Grogu also has considerably more agency and urgency in the action this time around, which addresses one of the show's recurring problems of the character being purely passive cargo. The cynicism of the toy-selling apparatus surrounding him is real and transparent and I refuse to fully pretend otherwise, but he is also genuinely, infuriatingly loveable in ways that make the cynicism difficult to sustain as a position. I went back and forth on this throughout and landed somewhere between charmed and mildly manipulated, which feels like an honest place to be.
The weaknesses are real and worth naming. The action sequences, while visually impressive in terms of scale and creature design, are frequently less exciting than they should be, amounting at times to elaborate CGI spectacle without the kinetic clarity and genuine tension that would make them truly memorable. Several fights have the quality of very expensive action figures being moved around a very expensive diorama, technically accomplished and oddly inert simultaneously. The character development for Din Djarin in particular is frustratingly static, moving him through the plot without pushing him into genuinely new emotional or narrative territory, and the film's admirable commitment to accessibility means it never quite achieves the depth that the best Star Wars has always operated at alongside its spectacle.
Star Wars returns to the big screen not with a masterpiece but with something considerably more valuable in the current moment, a film that remembers why the franchise belonged in cinemas in the first place and makes a genuine and largely successful case for its continued presence there. Not the triumphant return the seven year gap demanded but a solid, warm and frequently very enjoyable step in the right direction. Several leagues above nearly all the Disney+ Content.
'Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu' releases in cinemas on May 22, 2026.
Want more film reviews? Dive into more reviews, rankings, and film conversations on our site. Explore Film Focus Online now!
