Star Wars has always created a push and pull between the big screen and the small. In the early days, cinema reigned triumphant, with movies released in 1977, 1980, 1983, and then 1999, 2002, and 2005, versus nothing on television unless you count the weird 1978 Holiday Special or that time Luke Skywalker appeared on The Muppet Show.
But even then, TV beckoned. Before Return of the Jedi opened in 1983, the first Star Wars had come to home video, both as a VHS cassette and on heavy rotation on First Choice, an early pay TV channel that was the nearest thing that era knew of streaming.
More recently, the small screen has been in ascendance. In fact, it has been seven years since a new Star Wars movie came to a theatre near you, but that same period has seen 11 TV series, some of them amazing, such as Andor.
All of which makes The Mandalorian and Grogu feel like an event. Sure, it is based on three seasons of The Mandalorian (plus The Book of Boba Fett, which might as well have been a fourth). But it also makes great use of the big screen, with exciting dogfights, laser shootouts, and creature-on-creature violence, including a wrestling match between Hutts that can only be described as a slugfest. It is literally one battle after another.
It is also refreshingly small-stakes. Rather than try to defeat the Empire or the First Order, Mando's assignment is merely to hunt down Coin, a mysterious Imperial wanted for war crimes. Thanks to the Star Wars universe's bizarre lack of cameras, no pictures of Coin exist, so Mando has to first rescue Rotta the Hutt (son of Jabba) from a criminal syndicate in exchange for information on Coin's identity and whereabouts.
The simplicity of the task also means you can go in more or less cold. Unlike with Disney's increasingly convoluted Marvel universe, there is no need to study the latest plot twists, backstories, and political manoeuvres before the show begins. A quick title card (alas, not the traditional Star Wars scroll) gives you all you need to know.
Mando's assignment comes from Colonel Ward, played by Sigourney Weaver, whose work in Alien and Avatar (not to mention Galaxy Quest and WALL-E) makes her the nearest thing to science-fiction royalty these days.
He is accompanied on his quest by Grogu, the cutest thing to come out of the Star Wars universe since Babu Frik back in Episode IX. In fact, the new movie features a quartet of Babu Friks, or Anzellans as they are properly known. (This is also perhaps the time to remind you that it is “Grogu” and not “Baby Yoda.”)
Grogu elicits most of the chuckles in the film, through his wide-eyed reactions, chirpy vocalizations, and (filmmakers take note) being mostly a physical effect rather than a computer-generated one.
Other crowd reactions come from fan service. There are cameos galore and celebrity voices aplenty. Martin Scorsese is fantastic as the voice of a nervous, four-armed fry cook, and Jeremy Allen White from TV's The Bear provides the voice of Rotta.
