I never thought I’d fall asleep in a Star Wars film.

By Miles Slater

If you’d told me when I was 8 years old, as the 1980s landed and I had a Star Wars sleeping bag, action figures and a poster of Princess Leia on my wall, that one day I would be snoozing during one of the films, I’d have been horrified. But the cinema showing The Mandalorian and Grogu was stuffy – they’d had multiple showings on the day my son and I visited.

The film starts well. A promising action sequence at the beginning shows the Mandalorian hijack a trio of AT-ATs, all hell breaking lose. His mission, handed to him by Colonel Ward, played by Sigourney Weaver, is to bring in an Empire-friendly chap called Commander Coin. To do this, he has to get one of the Hutts in exchange for information. The film has a ‘noir’ vibe. One long sequence feels a lot like Blade Runner, all neon and night. Later there is a nod of the head to Apocalypse Now. The first fifty minutes was very good – it zips along, there’s a touch of humour – Martin Scorsese’s cameo as Hugo Durant, a street vendor (complete with Scorsese-esque eyebrows) is terrific, and it all feels very promising. But the second half descends into an endless series of battles. Here’s a monster to battle. No, wait, here’s another one. And another! It’s like a sci-fi version of WWE. There’s a lengthy sequence in which the Mandalorian is close to death in a swamp. His little plastic pal, Grogu, is nothing if not determined, and soon revives his buddy, if not the bored audience.

There are a few problems here. It’s way too long. Secondly, we barely see the hero’s face, which doesn’t really help matters. There’s only so much inflection you can get from a voice behind a mask. Secondly, Star Wars has always had a fatal attraction for annoying cute creatures. The Jawas were okay – they were pests in brown robes – but then we got Ewoks, and were asked to believe that a bunch of teddy bears could smash the Empire in Return Of The Jedi. Worse was to come – the Porgs in the dreadful trio of films that began with The Force Awakens were irritating penguin-type things. The cuteness curse reaches its zenith in Grogu – small and plastic-looking, and silly next to the helmeted Mandalorian with his rockets, lasers and low voice. Sigourney Weaver pilots an X-Wing near the end of the film, offering commanding lines, but sounds utterly bored, as if suggesting they turn left at the next roundabout, not detonate something at high speed. 

How I loved Star Wars as a kid. These days, it might be the film that wrecked cinema – making everything a little more two-dimensional. And yet The Mandalorian and Grogu, with its CGI effects, in jokes and $165 million budget (which it has recouped in its first week), has none of the charm of Episode IV, that first, brilliant hybrid of fairy tale and laser guns, one of the most beloved films in cinema. George Lucas sold the Star Wars universe to Disney for a colossal $4 billion in 2012, only to express some regrets later on. Disney, meanwhile, have extracted every possible dollar from the franchise, resulting in total revenue of $12 billion. I’ve now seen 12 Star Wars films in the cinema across almost fifty years. Maybe it’s time to let it go. ‘Don’t be too hard on it, Dad,’ said my son as we left. I could have said something about the law of diminishing returns in a galaxy far, far away, but I didn’t. Disney would see things very differently.