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For the longest time, I didn’t know how to begin this review. It needed a headline. But the only thing newsworthy about The Mandalorian & Grogu is that I didn’t hate it. And aside from Rogue One, I hated all the other Disney Star Wars movies.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t recommend this film. I will never watch it again. And I wish I could get back the more than 2 hours I spent watching it. (It seemed closer to 3.) But I didn’t hate it. I’m just completely indifferent.
And for a reviewer, indifference is worse than hatred. Indeed, as a reviewer, I find bad movies inspiring. It is fun to hate on Disney Star Wars products:
I liked season 1 of Andor, thought season 1 of The Mandalorian had promise, had mixed feelings about season 1 of Ashoka, and didn’t bother reviewing the rest of Andor and The Mandalorian, as well as The Book of Boba Fett, The Acolyte, and Skeleton Crew.
My vitriolic reviews going back ten years now to The Force Awakens actually helped inspire a vast sphere of YouTube commentators who have made a business of mocking Disney Stars Wars. At a certain point, the anti-woke reviews became more artful than the products they were trashing.
You can order The Best of Trevor Lynch here.
I believe that a decade of relentless online mockery of woke Star Wars finally broke someone’s spirit at Disney, because The Mandalorian & Grogu seems to go out of its way not to offend, dialing back the wokeness to the level of George Lucas’ originals, which seem reactionary by contemporary standards.
Sadly, although there’s nothing to offend here, there’s precious little to enjoy.
It’s a movie for kids, but it is too long, boring, and violent for kids.
Basically, The Mandalorian & Grogu plays like several episodes of the TV series stitched into a movie, which means that the plot is not tightly integrated, and the pacing drags.
This should have been more of a stand-alone story. The movie assumes that you have watched the series. But I lost interest in the series rather quickly. In fact, I had no idea who “Grogu” was. Last time I tuned in, we were all calling him “Baby Yoda.” Thus I felt like I stumbled into a fan convention and was being forced to endure the inside jokes of sniggering nerds.
Beyond that, to translate these characters to the big screen, they needed a much grander plot, not just one pulpy rescue and fight scene after another.
The Mandalorian & Grogu has cool designs, striking special effects, some well-choreographed fights, and excellent music by Ludwig Göransson. But none of that matters without an interesting plot, a tight script, and a sense of pacing. Apparently, they just didn’t have room in their $165 million budget for such frippery.
There’s also a shocking level of sloppiness in this movie. In one scene the Mandalorian, stripped of his helmet and weapons, is fighting for his life against monsters. Two scenes later, he pulls out a blaster. Where did that come from? And are we really to believe that gangsters would down the ship of a gun runner near their home, then just leave it there, air worthy and with all its inventory intact, just waiting to be used against them?
Disney is pulling out the stops selling toys of The Mandalorian & Grogu’s characters, monsters, droids, ships, etc. The ten-year-old boys who end up buying this stuff will probably come up with better stories on their own.
24 comments
Great article! I am glad to hear that Disney has “dialed it back” on the homoerotic, miscegenous slop of the Biden era. I wonder about the the geekish fascination with the Mandalorian; he was a minor character in the original movies. There is one odd detail I would like to bring up, if I remember right, Yoda was several hundred years old before he met Luke Skywalker. How old would that make the Mandalorian? I am probably wrong; I am not a Star Wars geek; I think Yoda’s age was mentioned in one of the cartoon series. 🙃
I think he is like 900 years old, he says.
Thank you. Wasn’t the Mandalorian‘s name Bobba Fet, or some such nonsense? 🙃
So this movie was made for people who want to spend their lives consuming streaming goyslop. The subscribers get to see their favorite characters doing the sorts of things they do in the streaming show.
That makes sense.
The length of the movie must be a benefit for the intended consumers. More slop for the same ticket price.
Better this than the upcoming Odyssey desecration or the Supergirl slop, I guess. Or if not better, at least not worse.
I was a bit behind on this, now catching up with noise a bit more. I’m not necessarily a ‘Nazi’ about anachronistic choices in design in film, there are technical or artistic reasons one might think about bending the rules sometimes, depending on what’s happening, but I was shocked at how much this Odyssey trailer is a monstrous concoction of nonsense, and that’s before we even get to the outrageous diversity bombs in the film which are making everyone ill already. The comments on yt are hilarious.
Nolan is the mainstream now in the worst sense of the term. His role is to reinforce the preferred cultural sentiments and myths of power. And I suspect that’s where he really wanted to be.
As for Star Wars, and it applies with Nolan too, AI means movies can’t be fully protected by the effort and money it used to take to create them anymore. That’s a very strange thing. It’s a bad thing for the arts in many ways, but there are upsides too. Undoing black and tranny castings, slop and bad stupid decisions, changing stupid American accents, or remaking dull films are upsides. This is a positive use of AI. I’m cool with it.
Could AI be used to make the “creator” jewish, and all the “agents” black in the Matrix movies? 🙃
The comments on YouTube about the upcoming Odyssey film are funny. There are mainstream actors that are criticizing it and defending it. Obedient goy actor, Tom Hanks, has declared that you are a racist if you don’t like the fact that Helen of Troy is being portrayed by a black woman. Other big-name celebrities are taking the same position. A lot of the YouTube videos that are mocking it are from what we refer to as normies. A lot of celebrities are having meltdowns over the criticisms. I’m getting a kick out of it.
Yeah I think this reaction is great. Let it roll. Apparently Musk has been leading the charge. I mean I suppose Nolan could try to justify this bs by saying “Well, it’s my modern interpretation of The Odyssey”. Ok, ok, ok…but it’s not really is it? It’s not really an honest answer. And it’s extremely doubtful these choices are natural artistic ones.
It’s the blatant result of institutional pressures and incentives, and in other areas race-to-the-bottom market expectations. It’s put Nolan in a very difficult credibility position where he hasn’t really got an excuse, as is he a director today with enormous clout to make films how he wants. But that’s not what’s he doing.
People are also commenting the trailer is rather dark and bland in many ways. Some of the shots do seem straight underexposed and improperly balanced between highlight and shadow. You have to be real careful with that. It doesn’t seem to me this Dutch Jew who’s now his cinematographer has understood this kind of shot properly. I’ll leave it for now, but I could go on a slight technical rant about what’s happening to Nolan’s films. But Nolan’s embrace of IMAX, exciting in many ways as it is, is also creating real problems about composition in the frame.
We’ve come a long way from the Dark Right essay entitled: Christopher Nolan: Fascist Filmmaker?
Making Helen a subsaharan is the ultimate maggot infested turd dropped right on top of Western Civilization.
The casting for this film is unusual. Achillies is being portrayed by Elliot Page. She is a 5’1 petiete female. She has decided to become trendy and jump on the trans bandwagon and declare that she is now a male. She/he/it looks weird.
There are two “rumors” if that’s what you call them about her part. Some are saying she’ll be playing Hermes. Thats a little more easy to believe than Achilles. Even logical. Think about it, Hermaphroditus was the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite, and the root of the word hermaphrodite. So it kinda sorta fits. I hope that’s her role, at any rate.
Achilles would be beyond absurd.
Oh and a correction, her name is Ellen Page. I refuse to call these freaks by their delusions.
You are correct, it is more of a rumor. It is being presented as fact on some websites and on many YouTube videos. Next time I’ll do my homework better. Thanks for the correction. Since they cast a negress as Helen, it wouldn’t surprise me if they really did consider a trans actor for the part of Achillies.
Ellen page is the most miserable bitch I’ve ever seen. Why wouldn’t Nolan just get lesser known but proven actors from those historical regions who at least look the part. Even the antiWhite Tarantino made August Diehl known and Christoph Waltz famous when no amerikan audience heard of either before that vile anti-NS film. Matt Damon is safe enough I guess, but bland and underwhelming.
What are your thoughts on the Star Wars animated series Clone Wars and Rebels?
Star Wars has so much potential if the right people were in charge.
Andor and Rogue One were good examples, but they could be even better if nationalists were in control…
Concept example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOSkUkIt0QQ
I liked both animated series. The Clone Wars was grating at first, but it became surprisingly good and very imaginative. Rebels was strong from the start.
Will check them out.
This movie was nothing more than an extended episode of the TV series. The gay son of Jabba the Hutt was also annoying. The “plot” was just a series of monster fights and surprise, surprise Mando always won. The whole movie looked like it was put together by an AI.A couple of parsecs better than the Star Wars dross of the last 10 years but still severely lacking
Nice review. I’m guessing that Trevor can’t wait to sink his teeth into The Odyssey?
Actually, he won’t be going. But he’ll be writing an essay about why.
Looking forward to it.
I know there are all those Star Wars novels but all these side-stories and add-ons… it seems like no one can come up with anything new these days. The appeal of Star Wars, the original, was its innovation. I can see why Kubrick destroyed the set to 2001 a space odyssey. He didn’t want some schmuck to make a remake. Pardon my Yiddish!
Just go with the video game adaptations if they’re bankrupt of all ideas and reduced to feminist sequels, spinoffs, and gay, blackwashing genderfluidization. Battletoads, Zelda, Megaman, Streets of Rage…?
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