Jack

#nw i love boosters with @sabooschin!!

#TheMandalorianAndGrogu is the most meaningless project Star Wars has ever seen; a movie corporately engineered not to ruffle anyone's feathers. Wholly inconsequential, its persistent commitment to being inoffensive has become its greatest offense. It evades being a complete narrative failure by having no narrative at all and unlike Season 3 of this once beloved series, the movie sidesteps mischaracterising beloved characters by not characterising them in any way. As Mando and Grogu tediously drag themselves from Point A to Point B and occasionally find out they should actually head to Point C instead, we learn nothing new about them. Din Djarin's journey towards becoming a walking action figure has finally been completed. I have never seen a lead character this fundamentally boring and utterly charmless. He barely speaks and even when he does, he never has anything important to say. He goes through no character arc, we learn nothing new about him and at the end of the story, he remains wholly unchanged. The few conversations we get between our "characters" - most of whom are puppets or CGI creatures - showcase Jon Favreau's dialogue, which is so bad, it makes even George Lucas most hated Prequel scenes sound like they were written by Tony Gilroy. With almost no story to tell and characters who have nothing to say - the most insight into their psyche is Rotta telling you how hard it is to make a name for himself as Jabba the Hutt's Nepo baby - the movie instead pivots to heavy use of action sequences. A few of them have genuinely entertaining moments, but most of them are far too long and utterly boring. Many of the fights feel completely weightless and oddly stilted; I have never witnessed an action movie with this little sense of momentum, which is strange, considering Favreau once shot Iron Man. There is a single sequence in this movie that actually evoked the magical feeling of watching a Star Wars movie. For roughly 20 minutes, Grogu has to do things on his own and the puppetry, cinematography, music as well as the visual storytelling and gags go hand in hand to create a memorable, incredibly beautiful sequence. Had the entire movie been like it, I would be singing its praises. Alas, all good things have to end, as the movie plods forward to its boring finale where nothing remotely interesting happens. The focus on Mando and Grogu's father-son relationship feels strangely secondary to this movie; even after Grogu saves his father's life in a way that shows how much the child has learned, it is barely acknowledged in favour of quickly throwing our heroes back into action. Everyone is really just...there. Embo is there, as is Garazeb Orellios. Colonel Ward - played by a bored looking Sigourney Weaver who completely phones it in here - gets roughly five minutes as the questmaster of Mando's story and has little influence on the plot. The villains are boring, one dimensional and unmemorable and disappear from the story for long stretches of time. Their motivations are either boring or nonexistent, but its no surprise in a story that really has nothing to say. If you're hoping for any insight into the New Republic and Imperial Remnant, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Though the cinematography sometimes evokes the feeling of being in a galaxy far, far away with, a few great establishing shots and a few interesting places (Nal Hutta was gorgeous!), this film still looks like a TV production far too often; utterly baffling considering the rumoured 166 million dollar budget. (Denis Villeneuve made Dune: Part One for the same price!) There is a crowd of unequivocally positive people who are already defending this as "a fun summer blockbuster" that you should not care to dissect. Afterall, "Star Wars is just for kids!" These poor excuses for an inherently bad movie are especially funny, considering this kids' franchise started with movies so well made, they became the gold-standard for blockbusters. 3.5/10