Source: Radio New Zealand (world)
It’s an action-packed crowd-pleaser, but the new Star Wars film is missing its heart.
The latest Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, demonstrates something important about the series it’s based on.
That is, The Mandalorian’s magic ingredient is not its gunslinging, jetpack-riding, masked hero.
The secret sauce is the tiny green alien puppet he must protect: a creature seemingly engineered for cuteness as well as anything Disney has ever created.
In leaning into action over warmth, the franchise’s new film ends up a less satisfying recipe.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is a kind of movie-form fourth season to the series, a sci-fi western that follows bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal – Last of Us, Fantastic Four: First Steps) as he adopts a mysterious “baby Yoda” we eventually learn is called Grogu.
Nearly 50 years of Star Wars aside, what you really need to know as the film starts is: an intergalactic gunslinger and his wee, telekinetic buddy are hunting bad guys across space after the fall of the evil Galactic Empire.
Director Jon Favreau (Ironman) set the standard for the modern Hollywood action blockbuster nearly two decades ago, and Mandalorian and Grogu is as slick, punchy, workmanlike and visually clear as you would expect.
The plot moves at a real pace but manages to stay impressively coherent as it rockets between planets, gunfights, space ship sequences, battles with monsters and more gunfights. It’s obvious from the opening sequence it’s going to be an impressive, if not particularly novel, romp around the galaxy.
But it’s also hard to feel stakes when bullets bounce off the protagonist as he recklessly and repeatedly wades through rooms, shooting dozens of baddies. Worse still, Favreau goes often and deep into the CG well, leaving sequences that should be exciting – there’s a lengthy monster coliseum battle – feeling safe and insubstantial.
These are the kinds of scenes that slide off your brain in real time as you’re watching them. After two hours, the sword fights, explosions and flamethrower blasts – as well choreographed and edited as they are – feel perfunctory.
The film equally struggles in its emotional payoffs, suffering from starting in the middle of well-developed character arcs, and seemingly not having many new places to go with them.
A brilliant score by Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer, Sinners) and effective sound design do a lot of the heavy work to add gravity back to the action.
While Pascal delivers a performance as good as in the series (one that’s impressive for a character who doesn’t emote much and whose face you usually don’t see), where the film delights is when it turns its attention to 40-centimetre tall sidekick Grogu.
When he tries to help and fails, it’s funny. When he’s threatened, it’s scary. When he squeaks and babbles, it’s silly. These are simple but effective moments that breathe life into scenes.
As Grogu awkwardly stumbles his way alone around a swamp – becoming the hero for a segment – it’s hard not to wish this was the film you were watching all along.
In these moments, the film not only evokes the campy energy of the original Star Wars trilogy, but it conjures the whimsy of classics like Gremlins (1984) and the Labyrinth (1986). There just aren’t enough of them.
Meanwhile, several characters from writer (and Star Wars mastermind) Dave Filoni’s various animated series make appearances. Easter eggs and winks are sprinkled around. Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) gives a perplexing performance as a confrontingly buff Jabba the Hutt-adjacent character; one whose exposition and story arc are so on-the-nose it’s difficult not to wince a bit.
Whether all these things are bugs or features will depend on viewers’ history with Star Wars. But Favreau has made an action-packed, crowd-pleasing, theme-park ride of a film that seems to aim well beyond the hardcore Star Wars audience.
In the translation though, it’s also lost something of the heart, danger and surprise that made The Mandalorian a triumph.
Boris Jancic is a member of RNZ’s digital team and reviews films.
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