. 

The lines between TV and movies have become very blurred. Not only are streaming shows now enjoying budgets and production values that would once have been entirely reserved for things that would end up on the big screen, but now when filmmakers start on their various passion projects they don’t even know whether they’ll premiere in cinemas or whether they’ll be put out on Amazon, Disney+, Apple TV, Netflix or Sky. Then there are stand alone feature length episodes of anthology shows like Black Mirror, are they movies? We also are get TV movies that are essentially just the latest episode in an established show like Marvel’s The Punisher: One Last Kill and last week’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War. Where do they fit? What if one of this was to be actually shown in theatres? Imagine that! 

Yep. When previous shows have made the transition to cinema, like Star Trek, The X-Files or The Muppets, the scale generally increases to match. Not this one though.

The Mandalorian and Grogo is more cinematic but narratively it has not stepped things up at all. In fact it might even have made things smaller; there have been episodes of the Disney+ series that have had more vision and excitement than this. This really does feel like a few early season episodes of the TV show tagged together. 

This is where we are though. We have gone from a point where the greatest icon in Star Wars was Darth Vader to a point where it is now Baby Yoda. This series, that in its infancy revolutionised cinema has now just become standard TV. This is partly because the latter has upped its game but I do feel that this movie needed to try and meet that challenge. What it needed to do at the least, if it couldn’t shake up the world of filmmaking or even the world of Star Wars, was move on the characterisation of its two title players and it didn’t even do that. Grogu has all been simmering potential since we first met him, the full force of his capabilities still to be revealed, and he’s still not approaching the boil. He’s basically just good with animals, jumping and lifting the occasional heavy object. 

In terms of the story, it’s compelling enough but there are aspects I didn’t get on with. Two of the things Star Wars at its best has excelled with is people in cool costumes (Vader, Boba Fett, the Stormtrooper, Darth Maul, Captain Phasma, Zorii Bliss) and puppets. This has been boiled down to its zenith here but too often we just a costume and puppet which did leave me hankering after an Han Solo, an Obi Wan, a Rey or a Poe Dameron, even an Anakin. I missed characters that could emote. Grogu is cute but that’s not the same thing.

Here is my biggest complaint though. The whole film relies very heavily on the relatives of the late Jabba the Hutt, in the form of his son Rotta and his twin cousins who are eager to take over his criminal legacy. Jabba was great in The Return of the Jedi but he worked for two reasons, first because he was a side mission and secondly because he was the best puppet of all; a superb piece of in shot special effects work; magnificent in his immobility. Right from the first time they CGed him and had him moving around, animated over a previously cut scene put back in to the Episode 4 Special Edition, he wasn’t as good. No one had to ask how he would look moving around when he was spread out on that slab in his Tatooine palace circa 1983, but the subsequent answer is that he’d look pretty stupid. Rendered with computer effects rather than foam rubber, fibreglass and gaffer tape he also seemed a bit weightless and unrealistic. So too do his kin here. There’s too much of them in the movie and for me they come over as more moronic than menacing. Rotta is particularly annoying with his ridiculous six pack (I’m not an expert on space slug morphology but I’m fairly sure a creature of this nature would not have stomach muscles tonable in such a fashion) and his off putting surfer dude intonation and obstinate, whiny attitude. Every time he came on screen it irritated me and when he opened his mouth I was sure someone had somehow forgotten to ADR in his real voice. In a catalogue of famously divisive creatures from the Ewoks to the Gungans, Rotta is hands down the worst creation in this entire franchise. I found his presence irritating and distracting. Come back Jar Jar, all is forgiven.

The soundtrack is weird too. I love composer Ludwig Göransson’s previous work on The Mandalorian but here it seems to regularly fall into a disco remix and I swear at one point in the closing credits it is playing out in the style of the music from Toy Story. When it comes out for streaming I’ll mention this again so you can all check. It’s there, I promise.

I’m not sure if I’d be more forgiving of all of this if I’d been watching all of this at home. I think even then I’d have found it a stretch. The action is okay and it is nice to see X-Wings in attack formation again (even if the plot didn’t require it) but it’s not enough.

In the end I just got a feeling from this film that I struggle to admit to myself. I’ve never felt this before, across forty nine years and through thick and thin this has never entered my mind but sitting there last night I came to the heartbreaking revelation that this Star Wars was just not for me. Perhaps as Kathleen Kennedy steps away as President of Lucasfilm and hands the reigns to Dave Filoni, who’s fingerprints are all over this with the heavy call backs to his Clone Wars cartoon, maybe the sensibilities of this universe no longer align with my own. 

I’m not going to get cross about it because I’m not one of those kinds of fan but Star Wars, you’re breaking my heart!  You’re going down a path I cannot follow!