A Star Wars Film I Chose Not to See at the Cinema
I had been waiting for The Mandalorian and Grogu since it was announced, and I also made a conscious decision not to see it at the cinema.
That was not because I had lost interest, objected to the ticket price or suddenly decided that Grogu’s ears were unsuitable for large-format projection. I always intended to wait until the film reached streaming. The Mandalorian had entered my life as a television series, watched at home one chapter at a time, and I was curious to see whether its move into cinemas would still feel like a film once it returned to the sort of screen where the story had begun.
Lucasfilm certainly positioned it as a theatrical event. Directed by Jon Favreau and filmed for IMAX, The Mandalorian and Grogu opened on 22 May 2026, becoming the first new Star Wars feature released in cinemas since The Rise of Skywalker. Pedro Pascal returned as Din Djarin, with Sigourney Weaver joining as Colonel Ward and Jeremy Allen White voicing Rotta the Hutt. Ludwig Göransson also returned to compose the music.
It was designed to be seen big. I waited until it became small again.
The digital release arrived on 21 July, the 4K and Blu-ray editions followed on 25 August, and Disney+ finally put the film back where I had always intended to watch it on 2 September. Lucasfilm also used the home release to foreground the craft behind the film — puppetry, miniatures, costumes, sound design and visual effects. That was the version I had been waiting for: not the compromised alternative after missing the cinema, but my intended way of watching it.
There is something slightly perverse about deliberately avoiding a film made for IMAX, but in this case the decision made sense to me. Din Djarin and Grogu were not characters I associated with opening weekends, crowded auditoriums or the ceremonial weight attached to a new Star Wars film. They belonged to the sofa, the television and the steady ritual of another episode beginning.
Watching at home also gave the film nowhere to hide.
Without the size and volume of the cinema doing part of the work, The Mandalorian and Grogu revealed itself as exactly what I suspected it might be: a familiar Jon Favreau formula expanded to fill a feature running a little over two hours.
Din accepts a mission. Grogu comes with him. The job turns out to be more complicated than advertised. They meet an assortment of creatures, allies, bounty hunters and people whose interpretation of an agreement changes as soon as blasters appear. Din is captured or cornered. Grogu looks concerned. Someone produces a monster.
This is the way — only stretched.
From Streaming Success to Theatrical Responsibility
When The Mandalorian premiered with Disney+ in 2019, it did more than introduce a masked bounty hunter and a small green child. It gave the new streaming service a cultural identity almost immediately.
The series drew heavily from Westerns, samurai films, serial adventures and the battered physical world of the original Star Wars. Din Djarin moved through settlements, deserts, industrial installations and frontier communities where the Empire had fallen but its damage remained. Grogu provided the emotional hook, although describing him only as the cute one misses how carefully the first season used him.
He disrupted Din’s professional distance. The bounty hunter who lived by contracts discovered that some obligations mattered more than payment. The series gradually transformed from a collection of jobs into a story about guardianship, belonging and the sort of family assembled from people who did not initially intend to become one.
That basic relationship was strong enough to carry three seasons, appearances in The Book of Boba Fett, countless toys and an industrial quantity of Grogu merchandise. Eventually, it was also asked to carry the return of Star Wars to cinemas.
The theatrical promotion emphasised that the film had been designed for IMAX, with a larger canvas and more elaborate action than the television series. Favreau remained central to the production, directing and co-writing the film with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor. Kathleen Kennedy, Ian Bryce, Favreau and Filoni produced, while Lucasfilm design director Doug Chiang continued shaping the visual language of this corner of the galaxy.
The shift created an awkward expectation. A television chapter can be modest. It can concern a village, a mechanical failure or one local creature. A feature film arriving after nearly seven years without a theatrical Star Wars release carries more weight before the opening crawl has even appeared. It is expected to justify not only its own existence but the continuing health of the franchise.
The Mandalorian and Grogu does not really try to shoulder that burden.
It tells another Din and Grogu story, and there is something admirable about that restraint. There is no attempt to explain the entire future of the Jedi, revive another dead emperor or uncover a secret Skywalker hiding behind a cupboard. The film largely remains within the New Republic period already established by the television series.
But there is also a nagging feeling that the film has not been substantially reimagined for the form. It is larger without necessarily being deeper. The environments are broader and the action has more room, but its narrative rhythm still belongs to television.
Several critics made the same complaint, describing the film as resembling two extended episodes joined together rather than a story conceived with a single feature-length dramatic arc. The critical response was divided: some appreciated its uncomplicated adventure and Grogu’s continued appeal, while others found it disjointed, safe and overlong.
Watching at home did not create that problem. It simply made it easier to see.
Another Job for the New Republic
The film picks up with Din working alongside the New Republic, taking contracts to deal with Imperial remnants that remain scattered across the galaxy.
The Empire has technically been defeated, but The Mandalorian era has always understood that systems do not disappear simply because their central building explodes. Officers remain. Weapons remain. Money remains. People who benefited from the old order become surprisingly philosophical about whether the war is really over.
Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward gives Din his latest assignment. Rotta the Hutt, son of Jabba, has apparently been kidnapped. Recovering him could secure valuable intelligence concerning the Imperial warlord Lord Janu.
The mission sounds simple enough, which in Din Djarin’s professional life is usually the first indication that it is not.
Weaver brings useful authority to Colonel Ward. She has spent much of her career playing competent people surrounded by institutions that are either unprepared, compromised or actively making matters worse. Ward feels like somebody who has survived the rebellion only to discover that winning a war and building a functioning government are different jobs.
The New Republic needs Din because it cannot be everywhere. It is trying to become an administration while Imperial remnants, bounty hunters and criminal families continue operating in the spaces between official control.
That background remains one of the more interesting aspects of this period. The original trilogy ended with celebration, but history rarely stops when the music does. Governments inherit damaged systems, veterans are asked to become bureaucrats, and the people who survived the previous order are left wondering whether the new one can protect them.
The film touches this material without exploring it deeply. Colonel Ward supplies the assignment and the institutional context, but the New Republic remains scenery rather than the subject. Din is still most comfortable working at the edge of authority, close enough to accept its credits but far enough away to leave before the meetings begin.
It suits him.
Rotta the Hutt Is Not Waiting to Be Rescued
The search for Rotta produces the film’s best early surprise.
The supposedly kidnapped son of Jabba is not sitting helplessly in a cell. He has become a bloodsport fighter, forced into an arena but more than capable of surviving inside it.
The sequence immediately reminded me of Thor: Ragnarok. There is the same broad pleasure of entering a gladiatorial environment expecting one sort of rescue and discovering that the missing figure has become an attraction. Rotta is not simply alive. He is enormous, angry and apparently capable of making the arena regret booking him.
The resemblance is not exact. The Mandalorian and Grogu does not adopt the comic colour or glam-rock energy of Sakaar. Favreau’s arena remains dirtier, heavier and more connected to the criminal world around it.
But the recognition was there, and it also gives Rotta a better reintroduction than I expected.
Rotta first appeared as Jabba’s infant son in the 2008 animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In that story, his abduction was part of a plot involving Ziro the Hutt, Count Dooku and an attempt to manipulate relations between the Jedi and the Hutts. He was essentially the package everyone was trying to recover.
Nearly two decades later, the package has grown teeth. Jeremy Allen White’s casting initially sounded like one of those announcements assembled by drawing names and characters from separate hats. Yet his voice suits Rotta. There is frustration beneath the physical confidence and the sense of somebody who knows that everyone has already decided what he is supposed to become.
Being Jabba’s son is not merely a biological fact. It is an occupation waiting for him. The Hutts have traditionally represented organised crime, indulgence and inherited power. Jabba did not need to move quickly because the entire room moved for him. His palace was a visual expression of authority built from fear, appetite and the knowledge that everybody nearby was replaceable.
Rotta complicates that inheritance. He is still unmistakably a Hutt. He is proud, physically imposing and not presented as a saint who happened to hatch into the wrong crime family. But he is also capable of loyalty and moral choice. He does not automatically treat everybody smaller than himself as property.
Having a good Hutt was refreshing. Not a harmless Hutt or a domesticated one, but a Hutt who understands what his father represented and does not wish to become a continuation of it.
That makes Rotta one of the film’s more useful characters because he reflects the same question facing Grogu and Din: how much of an inherited identity should be accepted, and how much should be rebuilt?
Din Djarin and the Safety of Competence
Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin remains an unusual leading performance because so much of it happens behind a helmet.
The physical role is shared with performers who give Din his movement, fighting style and specific weight. Pascal’s voice supplies the tired restraint. Din often sounds like a man who expected a straightforward working day and has once again found himself negotiating with people who consider attempted murder a minor contractual amendment.
The armour still does much of the visual storytelling. It carries Mandalorian history, professional identity and toy-shelf clarity. The clean silhouette makes Din instantly recognisable, while the scratches and damage prevent him from feeling ornamental. He looks like a knight designed by somebody who spent a great deal of time repairing motorcycles.
By the film, Din has accepted Grogu as his son and apprentice. The emotional argument that drove the first two seasons has already been settled. He is no longer pretending Grogu is cargo, temporary responsibility or somebody else’s problem.
That security is touching, but it also makes Din slightly less dramatically interesting.
Earlier seasons placed him between competing loyalties. His creed, his helmet, his people and his growing love for Grogu repeatedly pulled him in different directions. He could complete the job or protect the child. Obey the rule or reveal himself. Remain emotionally armoured or admit that he had become a father.
The film contains less of that internal friction. Din is now a dependable protector moving through an external adventure. He is capable, honourable and generally correct about who should not be trusted.
Competence is enjoyable to watch, particularly when accompanied by beskar armour and a good blaster. But competence alone does not create much uncertainty.
Din functions as the film’s steady centre. He enters danger, absorbs punishment and keeps moving. The story becomes more interesting when that function is removed from him.
When Din needs rescuing, the film finally allows Grogu to change the arrangement.
Grogu and the Anzellans Go to Work
The sequence I loved most was Grogu’s rescue mission with the Anzellans.
These tiny mechanics belong to the same species as Babu Frik, the droidsmith introduced in The Rise of Skywalker. Their size has always been part of the joke, but the film uses it visually rather than relying only on squeaky voices and reaction shots.
When Din is captured and badly injured, Grogu joins the Anzellans in an attempt to reach him.
For once, Grogu is not the person waiting to be collected. The old structure of The Mandalorian has repeatedly placed him in danger so Din can decide how many rules, enemies or parts of a building he is prepared to break in order to recover him. Grogu has been transported in cradles, bags, vehicles and the arms of adults who underestimate how quickly a small Force-sensitive child can become the centre of a military operation.
Here, he becomes the one doing the travelling. The rescue is funny because of scale. Machinery that would be background texture to Din becomes an environment for Grogu and the Anzellans. Pipes are enormous. Gaps require planning. The access routes of the Hutt palace become a miniature industrial world, full of spaces never intended for heroic entrances.
One Anzellan’s remark about a particularly large pipe became one of the film’s small comic highlights, reportedly improvised during the voice recording.
But the sequence works because it eventually stops being merely cute.
Grogu discovers Din wounded and poisoned. When retreat would be safer, he stays. He protects him, finds what is needed and uses his developing abilities to keep his father alive. The film’s ending material confirms that Grogu’s decision is central to Din’s survival.
The emotional reversal is simple but effective.
Din has spent years protecting Grogu. Now Grogu is old enough, trained enough and stubborn enough to protect Din.
Jon Favreau described the film as part of Grogu’s coming of age, and the production expanded the practical and digital techniques used for the character so he could participate more actively in movement, stunts and action. The finished Grogu remains a blend of puppetry and digital augmentation, with the filmmakers often working to make the boundary between the two difficult to detect.
This matters because Grogu could easily have remained static.
He is one of the most successful character designs in modern popular culture. Disney could keep placing him beside Din, giving him food, allowing his ears to react and manufacturing another decade of merchandise without significantly changing him.
The rescue mission allows him to become more than the face on the lunchbox.
He makes a decision.
He stays.
Small Characters in Large Machinery
The Anzellans are not major characters in the conventional sense, but they represent something Star Wars still does well when it remembers to slow down and look around.
The galaxy should contain beings who appear to have jobs.
Not everyone needs to be a secret Jedi, an Imperial spy or the lost relative of somebody from the original trilogy. Some people should repair droids, operate machinery, sell questionable parts and understand that a large pipe is occasionally worth commenting on.
That background life is part of what made the original films convincing. The cantina did not seem to exist only for Luke Skywalker. Jabba’s palace did not feel assembled five minutes before the heroes arrived. The environments suggested routines, work, danger and boredom continuing beyond the edge of the frame.
Favreau’s version of Star Wars has always been attentive to this.
Droids have specific functions. Ships require repairs. People barter. Armour becomes damaged. Somebody somewhere has to know how the machinery works, even when the hero is busy firing at it.
The Anzellans’ rescue mission turns that mechanical background into part of the foreground. Their expertise matters more than their size. Grogu succeeds because he works with people who understand the infrastructure of the place.
The film is generally at its best when heroism becomes practical.
Not destiny or bloodline. Sometimes heroism is simply finding the correct route through the pipes.
Colonel Ward, Lord Janu and the Supporting Machinery
Sigourney Weaver gives Colonel Ward more presence than the screenplay gives her depth.
That is not a complaint about the performance. Weaver can suggest an entire professional history through posture and impatience. Ward appears to have spent years dealing with pilots, officers, contractors and political superiors who all believe their part of the problem is the urgent one.
She also provides Din with a useful connection to the New Republic. He is no longer merely wandering between isolated contracts. His missions form part of a wider attempt to prevent Imperial remnants from rebuilding.
Lord Janu, by contrast, is less memorable. Jonny Coyne plays the Imperial warlord with suitable control, but the character remains functional. Janu operates the arena, controls the immediate threat and provides the Imperial connection that turns the Rotta mission into something larger.
He is a villain built to hold the plot together.
The best antagonists in The Mandalorian understood Din personally. Moff Gideon knew what Grogu represented, understood Mandalorian history and could attack Din’s identity as well as his armour. Janu is dangerous because he has soldiers, infrastructure and the confidence of a man who has not yet realised he is approaching the final act.
The film also brings established characters such as the bounty hunter Embo back into live action. These appearances are largely restrained. The story rewards people who recognise the wider history without requiring a notebook, three animated series and a colour-coded timeline.
That restraint is welcome. Modern franchise storytelling sometimes confuses recognition with development. A familiar figure enters, the music tells us to react, and everybody pauses while the audience identifies which earlier programme supplied the character.
Here, most of the returning figures at least have something to do.
Design That Still Feels Touched
The visual design remains one of the strongest reasons to spend time in this part of Star Wars.
The film moves through New Republic bases, Imperial installations, an arena and Hutt-controlled environments while retaining the used, repaired physical language inherited from the original trilogy.
The production’s Adelphi Base is a good example. The set was built from repurposed pieces, salvaged-looking machinery, trophies and objects intended to suggest history rather than clean decoration. Production designer Andrew L. Jones described using familiar manufactured materials because they already carry a believable human logic, continuing the old Star Wars habit of turning real industrial objects into pieces of another galaxy.
That approach appeals to me as a designer because it gives the world visual memory.
Objects do not simply look futuristic. They look as though somebody fabricated, purchased, damaged and reused them. A control panel is more convincing when it appears to have been assembled from several generations of equipment rather than drawn as a glowing rectangle.
The Hutt environments also benefit from scale.
Their architecture is heavy, damp and excessive. The Hutts occupy enormous chambers because power has removed any need for efficiency. Grogu and the Anzellans, moving through the narrow support spaces beneath that grandeur, reveal the machinery hidden behind authority.
The contrast is quietly satisfying: above, inherited criminal power; below, several tiny mechanics trying to get the ventilation system open.
Grogu remains the most important design object in the film, although calling him an object feels slightly cruel after watching him save Din.
His practical presence gives actors something to touch and light something tangible. Digital effects extend his movement, but the puppet’s slight limitations preserve weight. His ears, eyelids and hands carry much of the expression. He does not need a flexible human face.
A small change in posture can convey concern, a slightly longer stare can convey disapproval, and a hand moving towards an unguarded snack can apparently convey destiny.
Ludwig Göransson and the Sound of Din Djarin
Ludwig Göransson’s return gives the film an identity that belongs to Din rather than borrowing too heavily from the older Star Wars films.
His original Mandalorian theme was one of the series’ smartest creative decisions. The low recorder, percussion and electronic textures suggested frontier movement without copying John Williams. It sounded solitary, mechanical and slightly ancient.
For the film, Göransson expanded those themes into a feature-length score. The soundtrack retained the Mandalorian musical language while broadening it for the larger action and theatrical scale.
Watching at home probably reduced some of its physical effect. A cinema sound system would undoubtedly have given the percussion and low frequencies more force.
But I did not feel deprived. The music had always reached me through television. Hearing it again at home restored the association rather than diminishing it. Din and Grogu were back where their sound had first settled into memory.
The score also helps bind together a structure that occasionally feels separated into episodes. When the story moves from the Rotta rescue to the wider Imperial conflict, the recurring musical identity reminds us that the central relationship has not changed.
The film may expand around them, but the theme keeps walking at Din’s pace.
The Favreau Formula, Now Feature-Length
Jon Favreau understands clear adventure storytelling.
A capable traveller enters a place. A local problem is introduced. The job reveals another layer. Temporary allies appear. An apparent solution creates a larger danger. The traveller leaves having helped somebody and occasionally having acquired another piece of equipment.
It is a durable structure drawn from Westerns, samurai films, serials, role-playing games and older television.
Across the first seasons of The Mandalorian, it gave the galaxy useful variety. One episode could be a village defence story. Another could become a prison break, a monster film or a piece of frontier negotiation. If one chapter was slight, the next could change the scenery.
A film does not have the same freedom. At a little over two hours, the structure becomes visible. The Rotta mission feels like one extended chapter, followed by another concerning the Imperial threat and the consequences of the rescue. There is a clear midpoint where the story seems capable of stopping before beginning again in a related but slightly different direction.
The length is not unbearable. There are enough creatures, fights, small jokes and visual details to keep the film moving.
But it is stretched. The plot does not deepen in proportion to the running time. Lord Janu does not become more complicated. Din’s inner conflict remains limited. The New Republic material never develops into political drama. More things happen, but the story does not necessarily become heavier.
This is where deliberately waiting for streaming felt justified.
At home, the film could be paused, absorbed and experienced as the oversized television event it essentially is. I did not need it to convince me that it deserved an IMAX screen. I needed it to continue a relationship with characters I had always watched at home.
On those terms, it works better. Not perfectly, but honestly.
A Good Hutt and the Question of Inheritance
Rotta’s eventual choice gives the ending more substance than the main villain does.
He refuses to step neatly into Jabba’s place. Rather than reclaiming the old criminal empire as though inheritance were a command, he chooses a different relationship with the New Republic.
The decision does not erase where he comes from. Nor does it turn the Hutts into misunderstood victims of galactic prejudice. Jabba was still Jabba. His palace was still full of people who did not wish to be there.
Rotta simply demonstrates that legacy is not the same as fate, and that idea connects him to Grogu.
Grogu has received Jedi training but has chosen to remain with Din. He is also being raised within Mandalorian culture, although he can never become a conventional Mandalorian in appearance or ability. He carries fragments of different traditions.
The film does not ask him to select one identity and discard the other.
He can use the Force and wear armour; he can be Din’s child and his apprentice; and he can remain recognisably young while becoming capable of saving the adult who once saved him.
Din’s relationship with tradition has changed too. His creed once functioned as a rigid defence against uncertainty. Over time, he has learned that rules exist within human relationships, not above them. His commitment to Grogu has repeatedly required him to interpret rather than merely obey.
Rotta, Grogu and Din are all living beneath inherited systems. The good Hutt, the half-trained Jedi and the Mandalorian who became a father find ways to remain connected to the past without becoming trapped inside it.
That may be more thematic weight than the film appears interested in claiming, but it is there.
What Worked
The film works whenever it allows its characters to move beyond their expected function.
Rotta is not a helpless kidnapped son. He is an arena fighter with a moral independence that separates him from Jabba.
Grogu is not merely the child in danger. He organises a rescue and refuses to abandon Din.
The Anzellans are not only comic creatures. Their knowledge makes the rescue possible.
Colonel Ward is not another figure waiting for the old rebellion heroes to solve everything. She represents the difficult work of maintaining what the rebellion won.
The design remains tactile, Göransson’s music still carries its own identity, and the action is generally clear enough to follow without becoming visual noise.
The film also avoids burying Din and Grogu beneath excessive continuity. It contains references and returning characters, but it does not require every branch of modern Star Wars to arrive for a group photograph.
Most importantly, the relationship between Din and Grogu still works. That bond is familiar now, but it has not become empty. The rescue sequence gives it movement. Father and child have begun to protect one another rather than repeating the same one-way arrangement.
What Did Not Work
The running time exposes the limits of the television formula.
The story has incidents rather than sustained escalation. The arena, the Hutt politics, the Imperial threat and the rescue material are connected, but the connections often feel functional rather than inevitable.
Lord Janu is not strong enough to hold the film together as its major antagonist. He provides danger without leaving much impression once the danger has passed.
Din himself could have used more uncertainty. He is so settled in his role as protector that the film rarely tests his identity beyond physical survival. Pedro Pascal’s performance remains effective, but the material gives him fewer emotional corners to negotiate.
The New Republic is also more interesting as an idea than as a fully developed part of the story. Colonel Ward hints at the practical problems of the new government, but the film quickly returns to action.
Grogu’s charm remains potent, although the filmmakers occasionally rely on it as a pause button. A reaction shot arrives. His ears move. The audience is given a moment to remember that he is adorable.
He is, but the film does not need to check quite so often.
Watching It Where I Intended
I do not regret skipping the cinema.
That is not an insult to the people who saw it in IMAX or enjoyed the scale. The film was clearly constructed to provide that experience, and its sets, creatures, ships and music would have benefited from it.
But I had never imagined Din and Grogu primarily as cinema characters.
They arrived through television and became part of the streaming era: weekly episodes, online conversations, screenshots, toys appearing with suspicious speed and the strange shared anxiety generated whenever somebody threatened the small green puppet.
Waiting for streaming allowed the film to return to that context.
It also removed the pressure of treating it as the grand resurrection of theatrical Star Wars. I did not need it to restore a franchise, redefine an era or announce another trilogy. I could watch it as a long continuation of a series I liked.
On that scale, its modest ambitions became easier to accept.
The film remains overlong. It follows the Favreau formula closely enough that the machinery is visible. The villain is ordinary, and the move from television to cinema has expanded the surface more than the emotional depth.
But Rotta worked, the Anzellans worked, and Grogu becoming the rescuer worked.
And the central relationship still has enough warmth to survive another contract, another betrayal and another corridor full of armed people who have not been properly briefed about beskar.
I waited for The Mandalorian and Grogu to come home. Once it did, it looked rather comfortable there.
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