Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026) Review

A fun yet unnecessary Star Wars movie.

I’m a massive Star Wars fan, so I was excited when Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026) was coming out.

Unfortunately, the movie should’ve been a season of the TV show. The movie itself is self-contained, and it’s more or less a couple episodes packed into one. Those who don’t know that Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is based off of the television show The Mandalorian. The movie itself feels like a couple episodes combined into one. Of course there’s a flow of the story, so it feels more like a super long episode of the show with a big movie budget. 

The action set pieces and set design were really cool in this movie. Probably the best thing working for it as well. Some of the creatures and monsters in the film looked awesome. Especially the ones that were practical effects. Those looked really cool, as it was something real. It’s always interesting to see a big-budget movie rely on practical effects rather than CGI. Of course there’s plenty of CGI in this movie, but it was cool to see some handmade objects in the film. In those scenes when there is CGI, it definitely does stand out a lot more because they use so many practical effects. 

The movie itself is definitely entertaining, as I didn’t get up for the entire movie. It runs a little over two hours, which I thought was going to be too long, but the movie did keep itself pretty gripping. Some of that might just be where I’m a fan of the show and Star Wars, but I did feel like it had a good action-to-non-action ratio. They had a good way of balancing the two without keeping too much time, focusing on one or the other. It’s a similar pacing to what the show had as well.

Some of the acting in the film is just OK. Unfortunately, Sigourney Weaver seemed to be a little lacking in the film. I genuinely enjoy a lot of her movies, and I think she is a great actress, but she seemed to really phone it in for this one. It seemed like she was just kind of in it for the money and didn’t care too much about anything else, as her performance kind of reflected that. She didn't have a ton of scenes either, so I'm sure she had a more limited shoot and was able to make her money and move on. 

Some of the other acting in the film seemed a little flat. It was more of the charcters that had a few lines here and there. Like someone yelling out in a action scene or a person in the background or in the street. It sometimes made me laugh, but not in a good way. I don't know if they wanted to have that sort of feel be in this movie but it did. 

Speaking of characters, I did enjoy Jeremy Allen White doing the voice of Rotta the Hutt. Even though it was his voice that he was credited with, I still thought his performance was pretty cool. It was funny and not in a good way, but in the first few times in the film he kept bringing up that he was related to Jabba and that he wasn't like him. He said it so much so people not paying attention to the film wouldn't miss it, it felt like.

It is interesting that both Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and the Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie both center around the Hutts. They are both two shows that had a movie companion.  Both of them could have just been a few episodes or even not made. Although the Clone Wars stuff is a little less annoying as it's not live-action and live-action Star Wars has a higher standard. 

Seeing Martin Scorsese was also fun, even if it was just his voice of a character, not him actually acting in the film.  His character was really one of those that was in it just to have a big name voice it and make some toys out of it. You could have taken his role out of the film and change a few super small things that wouldn't change much. Besides that, Pedro Pascal was good as always as the Mandalorian. Everyone else was basically just alright in the film, as I didn’t feel like there was anything that really stood out acting-wise. 

Some of the best acting that Star Wars has had is from the Andor TV show. That also was the best all-around Star Wars story made by Disney by a mile. So now anything else Disney puts out that is Star Wars-related, I tend to compare it to Andor. I probably shouldn’t be doing that, but the bar is so high for what Disney can do. It just shows where their interests are. 

With a movie like this, you get people going and watching it just because it’s a Star Wars movie. Also, where the movie is close to family-friendly, you get some of the kids coming in as well. I also have all these creatures in the movie that they can turn into toys to sell. You also have Grogu, which is, of course, one of the most marketable Star Wars items in recent years. I feel like if he wasn’t in the show or if his character was another species, the show wouldn’t be as popular. 

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is a basic movie about the Mandalorian working for the rebellion and going to find someone. Of course there’s more to it than that, but it keeps a pretty simple premise. The movie also gives a lot of screen time to Grogu when he is by himself, which was definitely interesting. They really want to milk this little guy for all he’s worth. I enjoy seeing his character, especially the fact that it’s mostly done practically. But once they have a good idea or an idea that makes money, they really just want to hammer it over and over. 

The movie really could’ve just been a season of the television show.

They could’ve gone into more depth of a couple of the characters in the movie and given them some more background. They could’ve had more background for Sigourney Weaver‘s character and how she joined the rebels. Or you could’ve gone more into the hutts.

It’s pretty obvious why they did this, and it’s basically just to make money. But this didn’t pay off, as the movie failed to make back what it needed to break even. It had a pretty rough go at the box office, making it the lowest-grossing Star Wars movie ever. For the longest time it was Solo, the Han Solo film, but now it's The Mandalorian film, the worst-grossing Star Wars movie.

It feels like because it could’ve just been a television season or episode, many people just didn’t go and see it and are waiting to watch it when it comes out. Disney will probably keep it in theaters for a while so they can make just about as much money as they can, but it had such a bad drop-off in the second week that Obsession was able to beat it in its third week of being in theaters. 

It’ll probably do well on the rental service sites, and a lot of people will either get Disney+ to watch it or pay to rent it somewhere else. But I hope Disney looks into what made some of their more popular stories, such as Andor, so good, and that was originality. If they were to do a sort of story like Andor but turn it into a big screen or make it into a movie series, that would be pretty awesome.

It seems like they’re trying to do a non-force-user movie with the new Ryan Gosling one that’s coming out next year. We’ll see if that pays off because if not, it seems that Disney Star Wars movies might just never work from this point on. They might just need to stick to television shows and other media. 

They took a break from movies after the Rise of Skywalker came out. That film really was the nail in the coffin. I really think that one is the worst Star Wars movie ever made. A lot of people tend the agree. The movie tried to tie in the other films but fell apart. Because of how bad it did and how much people disliked it, they stopped all production on any future Star Wars films. They had a handful of movies planned to make after Rise of Skywalker but they had to hault and regroup.

With that being said, I thought this film would be better. But this film felt like a way for them to test if they can put out something new and see if peopel would see it. Not only that but see if they could do a film that didn't have anything big plot wise/ not as much big picture story telling. But where this film did bad, they will have to stop these one off movies.

It really only worked once with Rogue One, and some of that is where it came out at a time when we all wanted to see more Star Wars. After getting more and more movies, it felt like Disney was putting out quainty over quailty. Once the Solo film came out I thought they'd never do another one off movie. But it seems after all these years since Star Wars was on the big screen nothing really has changed in fans minds. 

It’s just gone so wrong for them with the Star Wars IP, and they really can’t milk it like they can with Marvel stories.

Star Wars isn’t made to be this sort of conglomerate thing that it is with movies and TV shows. It can work with other mediums like video games and books. It's an event that happens every now and then. If they were to space out the movies better and spend a lot more time developing the stories, they might make more money from them. Or let people just make the story they want to tell, which is what happened with Andor.

I know they have plans to do more films and maybe even do another trilogy at some point. I have a feeling that the film they have planned for next year will be more of a factor for if they plan to make more films. The TV shows they make seem to do well, but they really wanna make Star Wars movies a thing again. But it's not as easy as Disney seems to think it is. If they are not careful they might ruin the chances of a Star Wars movie ever making good money at the box office.