Our first trailer for the next Star Wars movie has arrived and it looks incredibly forgettable. Fans are picking apart a 90-second clip of The Mandalorian and Grogu and mourning the franchise’s loss of visual identity. Is Disney’s take on the sci-fi galaxy far, far away cooked, or is this just how a movie about a dude in a helmet and a green puppet is going to look in the year 2025?
Is the Mandalorian and Grogu trailer bad-looking? Yes. Is that sort of what I expected from the post-Disney+ entertainment industrial complex in the age of streaming? Also yes. Does any of this matter? Not to me. I did not stick around through three increasingly mediocre seasons of The Mandalorian for the second coming of Akira Kurosawa. I am coming to the movie to see some weird-looking aliens, goofy robots, and flashy lasers blow some stuff up. Even by those standards the teaser was a C minus, but the latest example of Star Wars mediocrity has some fans fully crashing out.
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In case you think this is just an algorithmically spawned dunkfest, the vibes are similar on YouTube. “This just looks like one episode of the show,” reads one comment. “I feel like people were more excited for the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith re release than for this one,” reads another. My favorite, though, is this summary: “50% of the comments: Jimmy Kimmel and the Empire, 49.9% of the comments: This Looks Like Season 4, 0.01%: Somehow Razor Crest returned!” Folks on Reddit are taking things more in stride. “Kinda looks like it’s just supposed to be fun, which I totally dig,” reads the top reaction. “Like if it’s just a movie length episode I’m down with that.”
That is about what I expected as well. I think it’s partly a testament to how much the Disney Star Wars shows, even when they’re bad, have looked like big-budget productions that The Mandalorian and Grogu movie just looks like a feature-length episode. I also think people are being a bit dramatic in rushing to judge a teaser for a film about back-bench characters who didn’t exist until just a few years ago against the most iconic stills across decades of original movies. It also feels like people have forgotten that Jon Favreau is directing.
What are the most memorable shots that come to mind from Elf, Zathura: A Space Adventure, and Cowboys & Aliens? I’ll wait. He’s not that type of director. The most visually arresting 60 seconds of footage he ever recorded was himself cooking a grilled cheese in Chef. He brings other virtues to his filmmaking, most of which are probably hard to get across in a 90-second teaser where almost no one talks. That is not a defense of The Mandalorian and Grogu, but it’s a point worth keeping in mind when judging the pre-release marketing for a movie about a stoic cowboy and his green muppet baby that’s literally called The Mandalorian and Grogu.
