Critics reviews for 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' are out, and it's yet another bad sign for Disney, Star Wars
There are arguments to be had over which film franchise would be considered the most "successful" in Hollywood history. But virtually everyone would agree that the "Star Wars" property is squarely in the top few on that list. And the franchise's latest release, "The Mandalorian and Grogu," is hitting theaters this weekend.
Some of the most legendary films in the entertainment industry came from Star Wars. Stories from George Lucas that organically created iconic characters. Characters that remain immensely popular and revered nearly 50 years after their inception. And as box-office returns for "The Force Awakens" demonstrated, there remains, or remained, widespread public interest in the "Star Wars" universe.
To this day, nearly 11 years after "The Force Awakens" hit theaters, it remains the highest-grossing film in the United States of all time, unadjusted for inflation. That film brought home a whopping $936 million in domestic grosses alone. For perspective, that's more than 2015's "Furious 7" and 2019's "Frozen II" made in the US...combined. In fact, it's more than $100 million more than those two franchise films combined.
People love Star Wars. Or loved. And therein lies the problem.
Each successive film in the most recent Star Wars trilogy grossed less at the box office than its predecessor. Interest in Lucasfilm and Disney's streaming shows set in the Star Wars universe has also waned. "Andor" has been popular and well regarded, yes, but the Obi-Wan show was widely panned, and "The Acolyte" was so comically "woke" that each episode became a running joke.
Outgoing Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy had no cohesive plan for the franchise, no vision for where it was heading. Instead of deeply thought-out stories for the legacy characters that emphasized heroism or gave them a fitting end to their arc, Kennedy focused on checking the correct boxes. Years later, most casual Star Wars fans, or film fans in general, are greeting "The Mandalorian and Grogu" with the most dangerous emotion possible: apathy.
If this upcoming release were to finally undo some of the damage, inject energy and life back into the franchise, and demonstrate that Disney and Lucasfilm had learned their lessons, it would need to demonstrate a bare minimum level of quality.
Well, the first set of critics reviews for "The Mandalorian" have hit the internet, and it turns out they haven't learned a thing.
The Independent summarized their review thusly: "Stick a fork in Star Wars. It's done." Their subheading reads, "With just five minutes of Pedro Pascal and a completely dispirited voice performance from Jeremy Allen White as Jabba the Hutt’s son, this is the dullest and most inconsequential ‘Star Wars’ ever made."
Several reviews frame the film as a collection of episodic television stitched together. And The Independent's review wonders how "many nails can we realistically drive into Star Wars’s coffin before it’s time to give up hope of resuscitation?"
ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE THE DON'T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!
Among all critics, the Rotten Tomatoes score is a mediocre 60%, but these are critics who are often highly incentivized to celebrate major studio releases and increase their access.
Variety did their best to salvage it, writing "'Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu' Review: An Efficient Adventure That Only Pretends to Be a Real 'Star Wars' Movie. Maybe That's a Good Thing."
And sure enough, they found a way to inject a preferred political ideology into the movie. Right-leaning film critic Christian Toto said in a post about the movie, "One late scene is a DEI highlight reel." Toto's full review even wondered why the film was even made, other than to provide some content for Disney+ down the road.
These are critics, and audiences may or may not find the film more interesting and enjoyable. But this is the bed Disney and Kennedy's Lucasfilm have made for the franchise. They undermined the characters' legacies, had no plan or goal for the stories they wanted to tell, and put politics ahead of creativity. Now they're looking at the least successful entry in the history of the franchise. Both commercially, and in some reviewers' minds, creatively too.