Some have suggested that the film will baffle those who haven't seen the tv show and its spin-offs (The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka) but I think that's an unfounded fear. The only confusion might come from people thinking the Mandalorian is Boba Fett, since they wear very similar armour. He's not, he's a new character, Din Djarin. The film tells you all you need to know – a bounty hunter is hunting bad guys – and in fact it would work very well as a direct sequel to Return of the Jedi.
This film is set shortly after Jedi. The New Republic is a scrappy little upstart, struggling to prevent a resurgence of the Empire. The Mandalorian (voiced and at times played by Pedro Pascal) has been tasked with capturing (ideally) or killing (more likely) former Empire officers who are now setting themselves up as local warlords. It's work that he enjoys and he is good at it, and his orders come directly from Sigourney Weaver (playing a new character, Colonel Ward of the New Republic).
The first part of the film shows how this typically goes: the Mandalorian tracks down his target, then starts killing people and blowing things up until the target is dead. This time it involves running down a hill in a scout trooper and taking on three AT-ATs at once. It's a thrill-a-minute stuff, closer to George Lucas's dream of resurrecting the spirit of the old film serials than Star Wars (the original one) itself.
The rest of the film sees the duo take on a second mission. This one doesn't go quite so smoothly, and isn't as ethically clear-cut. To learn the identity and location of an Imperial bigwig, the New Republic has agreed to help two Hutts, huge slug-like crime lords, to find and rescue Rotta (Jeremy Allen White), their nephew, and the son of Jabba the Hutt. But what if Rotta doesn't want to be found by them – is the intel so important that his feelings don't matter?
One complaint has been that the film is essentially the same as the tv show, which seems unfair, since the show was so cinematic, each episode reportedly having a budget big enough to pay for an entire season of Doctor Who. Like the tv show, The Mandalorian and Grogu is full of spectacle, weird landscapes and alien creatures, and balances that with lots of character moments, not least during a memorable sequence when the Mandalorian is incapacitated and the camera comes down to Grogu's level.
If there's any criticism to be made, it's perhaps that there isn't much progression in the stories of our main duo – we don't learn any more about their origins. Also, it might have been nice to see more of their old allies, like Cara Dune (Gina Carano) and Migs Mayfeld (Bill Burr) – season three was also poorer for their absence. But other old friends make little cameos, and I can't really complain about a Mandalorian and Grogu film focusing on the Mandalorian and Grogu.
An enthusiastic four stars from me. To put it in movie-poster terms, it's a rip-roaring outer-space adventure, fun for all the family. Stephen Theaker ****
