A Trip to Bountiful

The Mandalorian and Grogu

starring Brendan Wayne, Lateef Crowder, Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allen White('s voice), Jonny Coyne, Shirley Henderson('s voice), Martin Scorsese('s voice?!?!?) and Pedro Pascal('s voice, mostly)

directed by Jon Favreau (Swingers, two of the Iron Mans, Elf, Daredevil [the Ben Affleck one])

---

NORMALLY THIS IS WHERE A SPOILER WARNING WOULD GO, BUT COME ON, BABY YODA LIVES, IT'S FINE

---

One of the recurring segments of the old Muppet Show, was "Pigs in Space," which I remember always looking forward to because it was vaguely sci-fi shaped and I had been exposed to Star Wars by that point. Just to be clear, The Muppet Show in its original first-run airing I was far too young for, though I was definitely alive by then. I don't know why it's important to me to make it clear to you that I was aware of "Pigs in Space" in second-run syndication, probably on daytime television. I'm ok with you assuming I'm a giant dork, but I draw the line at letting you think I'm a Boomer.

In retrospect, I couldn't tell you a single character or plot scenario or even the premise of the sketch beyond the titular pigs in the also titular space, I just know it was presented as something Star Wars adjacent, which was satisfying enough for me at the time. I've looked it up for the purposes of writing this and apparently Miss Piggy was a recurring character, which I should have definitely just have assumed, but again, if asked, I couldn't produce a single piece of trivia about the thing beyond the fact that it made me sit up and take notice, with not only anticipation but a certain amount of relief, as in: oh yes, at last, the space thing is on, no more waiting through this bullshit. Of course as I got older I understood that the "bullshit" was, like, Madeline Kahn being a big bright shining star while co-starring around a bunch of felt socks with googly eyes stuck on, but those first impressions didn't register anything as subtle satire, talent or even actual entertainment. I didn't even apparently actually give the first fuck about pigs, as long as I got the in space.

That's really the best way to understand a lot of my interaction with both Star Wars and Star Trek content these days. It used to be true with Marvel and DC movies as well, things I'd always wanted to see when I was a kid and would sit up a little straighter for when, as an adult, their trailers would pop up ahead of whatever it was I was seeing instead (at that point, probably a totally different DC or Marvel film. We all remember the 2010s). Ever since Star Trek: Enterprise and then The Force Awakens 15 years later, I had to transition through the phase of rising to defend "the good parts" of shakily executed things I wanted to automatically like, to myself as much as (or more than) to other people even though it was evident to everyone that the quality was what it was. It's not that those projects or their postcedents were necessarily bad, it's just that they weren't obviously good either. And then, yeah, eventually The Rise of Skywalker comes out and there's no more room behind you left to retreat, it's all been sawn away by JJ Abrams and you're full Wile E. Coyote, standing unsupported in the sky, suspended by habit and hope vs. the pitiless reality of gravity, a contest that resolves itself exactly in the way you'd imagine, every single time.

I'm not only older now, but I'm fully on the other side of full psychosis fandom. I still watch the stuff, just now with arms crossed, daring it to impress me; dubious, but with just a crack left ajar for the light of something that is actually good to break through, like Andor or more recently the visually gorgeous Maul--Shadow Lord. The latter may end in a lot of noise and an overused climactic cliche of a Vader reveal (see also Rogue One, Jedi: Fallen Order, etc.), but it's pretty, fluid, thoughtful noise where people do cool flips and shit, so I was down. I'd have forgive Daredevil: Born Again season 2 if there had been one goddamned ninja in it, but no, I had to settle for some decent performances and all the ultimately unresolved angst masquerading as character. I'm going to need way more spin kicks if you want my thumbs-up, show about a guy who is a blind karate man.

I went into The Mandalorian and Grogu with the right kind of skepticism then, with a bar low enough that anything short of "Somehow, Palpatine returned" was going to clear it. The question was by what kind of margin?

And the answer is: eh, enough. I watched the whole thing, on a last-second whim of a plan with my youngest adult child. And I wasn't ever entirely bored, nor did I audibly groan at any of the ideas, characters or dialogue, which is saying something considering it included our first ever look at a Muscle Hutt, the swole-ass son of the merely swollen Jabba.

The Hutt in question is called Rotta, meaning this one is a soft sequel to another Star Wars low point, the cringe minefield that was the pilot film for The Clone Wars animated series. That one I had watched out of parental obligation as I had three children under 10 at that point, all of whom I naively and irresponsibly already exposed to Star Wars, setting my own petard in place upon which I was then hoist. What that awful film brought us as two things: an improving-to-the-point-of-genuine-excellence Clone Wars series over many years and the rise of showrunner Dave Filoni, who now famously has never had an idea he was willing to throw out. On the one hand that gets you the knowing hat-tip of fan service with Rotta in this movie along with Zeb from the Rebels series and a cameos by Filoni himself as an X-Wing pilot, paying off your attention even if it was to stuff you didn't necessarily like on the first helping. On the other hand, you end up kind of wishing for just one new idea.

Look, the Baby Yoda is very cute, as are the even-smaller-than-Baby-Yoda creatures ported in from Rise of Skywalker our wide-eyed Grogu gurgles and waddles around with. The puppet-action of Grogu and his wee alien pals (I'm not looking up the species, nerds, I told you I'm past that) is very charming and carries the last third of the movie as much as any action set pieces do. But overall, this doesn't really pay off or bring forward any character information established in any of the seasons of The Mandalorian, all of which I watched,. Three seasons only really got me some saved time in the beginning since I didn't have to pay attention to any exposition establishing the characters.

To this film's credit, though, there is almost no exposition. All you really need to know is that the silver man and his little frog pal find people, and they're sent off to do so from the geriatric retirement home for X-Wing pilots led by Sigourney Weaver. The main antagonist our title characters mostly interact with, some kind of lizard-robot in a sombrero, is pointedly mute; they just go about their business antagonizing.

It's all very efficient but still feels bloated somehow. It's entirely inessential and doesn't accomplish much in the lore department. In some ways that's a nice break from every other part of the Star Wars franchise very needily screaming in your face LOOK HOW IT'S ALL CONNECTED! REMEMBER THIS GUY FROM THE OTHER THING? YOU LIKE THAT, RIGHT? SAY YOU LIKE IT! But at the same time, you do come away from a series of fights with a series of monsters in an escalating scale of both size and grossness, wondering whom this is for and for what purpose. Entertainment? Sure. But is Star Wars about entertainment anymore, absent the more blatant pieces of fan service? When this film starts, our Mando and Grogu are an established team doing low-level jobs for their preferred employer. It ends with that status quo exactly in place, subtracting only the two hours it took us to get there.

It was fine. My instinct to wait for streaming for essentially a two-parter episode of a show I kind of forgot about was probably the better way to go. But I went with my son, whom I'd gotten into this mess in the first place by letting him watch any of this stuff, which is the kind of experience I'm happy to say is almost as envigorating and appealing as the opening titles of Pigs in Space used to be when I was, like, seven. Almost.

---

Note: published on a Wednesday, one day early, because of Having A Life. It's inconvenient, but it does occur occasionally.