Movies & TV Star Wars If You Love ‘80s Fantasy Films, Go See The Mandalorian and Grogu Right Now Also if you love Star Wars animation and the weirdness contained therein. By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on May 22, 2026 Image: Lucasfilm Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Lucasfilm Going straight in, I’ll be brutally honest: I didn’t have particularly high expectations for The Mandalorian and Grogu. I’m not sure that anyone does, being that it’s a film-length version of a television series that, while enjoyable in general concept, has been pretty thin on the ground for narrative. Even knowing that Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor were going to help creator/director Jon Favreau unspool a healthier script wasn’t enough to assuage my doubts. The opening didn’t do much to help the film’s case, but that was a very specific bugaboo for my sort of brain. You see, the opening sequence shows Din Djarin and Grogu taking out an Imperial garrison being run by a two-bit official who’s using his position for extortion, the next on the New Republic’s list of Empire diehards that they’ve asked their bespoke Mando to bring in. The trouble is, this specific scenario is one that was used to even more emotional effect in one of my favorite Boba Fett stories from the anthology Tales of the Empire. I’m that kind of fan. It bugs me to no end that they keep giving the Mandalorian a lot of Fett’s greatest hits. But the film continued, and Sigourney Weaver popped up as Colonel Ward to give Din a new ship (which looks exactly like his old ship, minus a paint job) and a new mission: Go to Nal Hutta to talk to the late Jabba’s relatives because they’re worried about their nephew, Rotta. When Din retrieves the kid and brings him home, he’ll receive intel on a major Imperial remnant leader named Janu Coin (Jonny Coyne because, yeah, they did that). Instantly, I perked up. We’re going to see Nal Hutta on a movie screen? We’re going to go get Jabba’s kid, who hasn’t been seen since the first episode of the Clone Wars series, when he was rescued by Anakin, Obi-Wan, and a newly commissioned Ahsoka Tano? And Garazeb Orrelios (Steve Blum)—one of the Ghost crew of the beloved Rebels series—is going to be their teammate for the mission, which means he’s not just a bit part in all this? Image: Lucasfilm The Mandalorian and Grogu is not a movie for any old Star Wars fan, or perhaps any old audience. It exists at a weirdo fever dream intersection of specific desires and interests: Did you like The Mandalorian? Well, this is basically one of their better seasons on film, odd though that choice may be. Did you like the Star Wars animated series, but more specifically, the weird grubby little corners those shows were more free to explore? That is exactly where this movie lives. Do you love ‘80s fantasy films full of puppets and silliness and the occasional grotesquerie? Did you, perhaps, adore… the Ewok Adventures as a child? Oh, strap in, friend, we’re going for a ride. I make this argument endlessly, but I think it bears repeating here more than ever: Part of the reason why the animated shows are so good at creating Star Wars narrative is because they’re aimed at children. You know what children don’t care about? If something is weird or goofy or absurd or embarrassing. You can spend hours talking about Banking Clan criminal activity, and no one is complaining. You can devote reams of story to the idea of using a rare alien species to create weapons of war and make a King Kong pastiche while you’re at it. You can go on about Hutt politics, endlessly. Plenty of adult fans do not want this version of Star Wars when that is, frankly, the only reason to watch it. Yes, I know, we can also have Andor. And I loved Andor, okay? It’s still not why I watch Star Wars. I can get plenty of realistic sci-fi resistance narratives elsewhere, and they’re far more common than what I get in this sandbox. I’m here for alien planets and robots with personalities and puppet friends with heartbreakingly beautiful faces and gnarly zombie resurrections from termite people. No one else is currently giving me that on screen, and it’s frankly baffling that we need to ask for it nearly half a century into this fictional universe’s tenure. To wit, when Din goes to see Jabba’s relatives, there’s definitely a Hutt orgy happening in the background. (The creative team are going to claim that they’re eating, and definitely arranged it as such for plausible deniability, but I know what I’m looking at.) The Hutt palace is sporting architecture that lines up directly with Jabba’s on Tatooine, so now we know that he didn’t move into a place built by a former crime lord or work with architecture already found on the desert world. There are robot guards at the Hutt palace that are scavenged bits from nearly every kind of droid you’ve ever seen. Many of them have Separatist battle droid faces, which means that droids who figured out how to break away from organic masters are constantly upgrading themselves, and there’s a market for those parts. When Din is shown a picture of Rotta, it’s woefully out of date, and looks exactly like the baby that got rescued in The Clone Wars premiere. Why do you need an endless array of action sequences? You could have this. Which is one way of saying that the action in this film is nothing exciting to write home about. Co-leads Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne—the stunt performers who portray the Mandalorian while helmeted—are still doing incredible work, and the lion’s share of it; Pedro Pascal’s face is still only visible for a few precious minutes of screen time and, my qualms about the Death Watch cult rules aside, I adore the commitment to this bit. The score by Ludwig Göransson is the show’s score amped up for big screen dazzlement, and you can tell how much fun the composer is having messing around with all his previous good work. Image: Lucasfilm And Grogu? The chance to showcase the range of the puppet is precisely what you should be using big movie budget bucks for. He has whole side quests that play out entirely without dialogue. (There’s so much good slapstick comedy that comes of this.) Everyone in the movie is giving the kid snacks, whether they intend to or not. He hitches a ride with a group of Anzellans—that’s Babu Frick’s species—and we learn that hyperspace-worthy ships for tiny people do exist. Oh, and Jabba’s kid, Rotta (voiced, so wonderfully and inexplicably, by Jeremy Allen White)? He’s super jacked and but also super kind. Yet again, we come back around to the idea that being a good parent is the greatest thing you can be in Star Wars, and find out what becomes of beings who… don’t get to have that. And sure, he’s a CGI slug guy, but his plot is genuinely moving?? What am I supposed to do with that? Martin Scorcese has an extended cameo as a CGI food seller and goes 5000% all out. There are sea serpents, and Zeb gets to fight with his bo-rifle against a hail of stormtroopers (his favorite pastime), and the New Republic are actually behaving like the good guys for a change. We get some just comeuppance against the Hutts for constantly using imprisoned wild animals to do their dirty work. A send up of the gladiator games in Thor: Ragnarok is made instantly unique when you hear Coin say that it’s going to be a Dejarik Match. You either know what it means, or you don’t. It’s going to be fun regardless, but if you do know, you get that smart little hit of serotonin in a way that, for once, doesn’t feel cheap and unearned. My complaints are few and far between, and they’re mostly wrapped up in the difficulty of animating certain characters in CGI and then having trouble with the mechanics of these renderings on screen. Zeb suffers the most in this; the guy is supposed to be big and also has decidedly non-human limbs, but they scale the lasat way down, likely for the purposes of the human actor stand-in. This is only truly a disappointment because the advent of CGI was meant to free us up from those sorts of restrictions. But you still can’t be too sad over a character like Zeb actually being able to enjoy a sizable part in a film like this thanks to the technology. Image: Lucasfilm It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, for sure, but I’m astounded that there are any intended mega-blockbusters going this route in the year of 2026. I haven’t seen one of The Mandalorian and Grogu’s like in ages, and I’m worried that I may never see it again. If you’re missing this sort of journey from your movie-going life, I recommend that you get to a theater with a friend or child in tow as soon as possible.[end-mark] The post If You Love ‘80s Fantasy Films, Go See <i>The Mandalorian and Grogu</i> Right Now appeared first on Reactor.