More Than Anything, I Want "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu" to Surprise Me

We're about a week away from the theatrical release of Lucasfilm's new movie Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, but numerous members of the media (including myself) will be seeing it this evening. Below are my hopes prior to going into this screening of the first Star Wars movie in six and a half years.

As the release of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu has approached, I keep thinking back to the evening of Tuesday, November 12, 2019. That was the day when Disney+ launched, and I remember coming home from a screening of the live-action Lady and the Tramp reimagining to find that the streaming service had gone live a few hours earlier than had been advertised, which meant that I could sit down and dive into the very first episode of Lucasfilm's then-brand-new live-action series The Mandalorian. I was already really excited for the show (moreso than I was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which would be hitting theaters about a month or so later), having seen some preview footage at Star Wars Celebration 2019 in Chicago and being quite a bit more into the underworld / bounty hunter aspects of A Galaxy Far, Far Away than I am into the legacy of the Jedi in the sequel era.

Beyond that, I'm generally a fan of filmmaker Jon Favreau's. Chef is probably my favorite movie of his as a director, but Made, Elf, Zathura, Iron Man (1 & 2), and The Jungle Book are all fun (at the very least) as well. 2019's The Lion King I saw as an experimental film, and sure enough the technology developed in the (re)making of that film went a long way into helping The Mandalorian become a reality. Cowboys & Aliens is the only one of Favreau's movies that I would consider a real miss, though I would be open to revisiting it, as I only saw it once in the theater when it came out. The footage he showed at Celebration Chicago was exciting enough to have me publicly say-- right here on this very website-- that The Mandalorian was the Star Wars project everyone should be most excited about in the fall of 2019, and I believe I was proven correct... no offense to J.J. Abrams.

Anyway, back to that November evening on my couch firing up Disney+ for the first time. We knew the basics of what The Mandalorian would be about, and there were definitely some great action and character beats along the way, but the end of that first episode held a surprise that I don't think many of us fans predicted. And that was the introduction of a new character who would become the adorable face of the franchise over the next half-decade and more: "The Asset" known soon thereafter only as "The Child" or "Baby Yoda..." until Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano in her very first live-action appearance revealed the 50-year-old kid's name to be Grogu in the show's second season. Favreau and company had smartly held Grogu as that episode's surprise cliffhanger, omitting him from all marketing materials and merchandising ahead of the Disney+ premiere, which probably cost The Walt Disney Company a lot of money that Christmas season but ended up paying off in dividends over the following years.

So now, six and a half years later, as I prepare to witness Din Djarin's graduation to the big screen alongside his diminutive green ward, the one thing I find myself really hoping for is a similar type of surprise-- something that none of us are anticipating going into this movie. Like most other fans, I've seen all the trailers for The Mandalorian and Grogu, and I had the opportunity to watch the first 25 minutes of the film at the recent IMAX preview event on May the 4th. I enjoyed that footage well enough, but I can't help but feel (and hope, to be honest) that Favreau, Lucasfilm, and Disney are once again holding something back. And while it may not be the seismic shock that "Baby Yoda" provided to both the fandom and the general viewing public in 2019, I am really crossing my fingers that it will enough to have me jazzed about this movie-- not to mention the future of Star Wars as a franchise (no pressure)-- as I walk out of the theater tonight.

There's no denying that Lucasfilm, much like the entertainment industry as a whole, is undergoing a sea change during this tumultuous period for the movie and TV businesses. Could I have predicted a decade ago that Dave Filoni, who then was known basically as the Star Wars animation guy, would be in charge of the entire company after Kathleen Kennedy's tenure came to an end? Absolutely not. But the more time I have to sit with that outcome, the more it just feels right to me. In my opinion (having seen him speak on numerous occasions) Filoni, perhaps more than anyone else outside of creator George Lucas himself, just gets what Star Wars is about on a fundamental level. The franchise's characters and themes seem to flow through him like the Force, and I would say that his creative partnership with Jon Favreau is a huge part of what made The Mandalorian work as a series.

Filoni co-wrote Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu with Favreau (and Noah Kloor, who penned one episode of the show's third season). And Favreau directed my favorite episode of the series: the second-season premiere, which was entitled "The Marshall" and introduced Timothy Olyphant's character Cobb Vanth into live-action Star Wars. So the pedigree is undeniably there behind the scenes, and the talent is also present among the cast, with Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allen White, Steve Blum, and unlikely guest star Martin Scorsese all contributing their acting chops. Based on what I've seen so far, I have no doubt that the action and visuals will be on point. But it's what's beyond that first 25 minutes that really intrigues me: will the rest of story play out straightforwardly, as has been suggested, with Mando and Grogu hunting down Imperial remnant warlords for the New Republic and getting entangled with the Hutts along the way? Or could there be something else-- something Lucasfilm is not telegraphing, something that we haven't seen coming-- waiting for us in the remaining 4/5ths of the film? I can only reiterate that I hope to be surprised.

Look for my initial reaction to Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu after the screening tonight on Laughing Place's social media feeds. The movie will be released into theaters on Friday, May 22.