I hope “The Mandalorian and Grogu” is Star Wars’ return to the big screen for good

Before the latest Star Wars movie, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” came out on May 22, it had been seven years since a theatrical release from the franchise.

You can pretty much squarely put the blame on the rise of streaming and Disney’s early difficulties producing movies.

Disney+ launched on November 12, 2019 alongside “The Mandalorian” television series. On Disney Investor Day 2020 they announced 12 new Star Wars projects, 11 of which were slated to be Disney+ originals.

Those were as follows: “The Mandalorian,” “Rangers of the New Republic,” “Ahsoka,” “Andor,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “The Bad Batch,” “Star Wars: Visions,” “Lando,” “The Acolyte,” “A Droid Story,” “Willow” and the only movie of the bunch, “Rogue Squadron.”

By and large, this reveal has been considered a massive flop.

“Andor,” “Ahsoka,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “The Bad Batch,” “Star Wars: Visions” and “The Acolyte” all released, but besides “Andor,” the others didn’t really land. “Rogue Squadron,” according to IMDB, is now a planned TV series.

When Disney first bought Star Wars in October of 2012, the plan was to release the first movie of their new episodic trilogy in 2015, then the other two in 2017 and 2019, with spinoff movies in between. Then they intended to release every two or three years.

So what happened?

Disney shuffled through a million directors and writers, for one.

Gary Whitta was dismissed as writer for “Rogue One,” and director Gareth Edwards was fired during post-production (extremely late in the process, not uncommon for big-budget films but certainly noteworthy). Disney called in Tony Gilroy to take over the editing and do re-shoots.

“Solo” was truly a disaster. Phil Lord and Chris Miller co-directed the project, but were canned mid-way through production due to significant creative clashes with Lucasfilm executives. Ron Howard came in and finished it out, but the re-shoots ballooned the budget and the movie ended up a big loss.

The budget ended up at $365.7 million and the film grossed $393 million at the box office. Only $213 million of that was domestic.

The proposed “Boba Fett” movie went through directors Simon Kinberg and Josh Trank before settling on James Mangold, just for the project to be cancelled after the flop of “Solo.”

There are countless other projects you can look up that were cancelled, delayed, changed or are in limbo.

These hardships (along with financial “motivation” from investors) likely pushed Disney headfirst into the streaming era, all but leaving Star Wars movies behind.

Projects that were supposed to be movies, like “Book of Boba Fett” and “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” became Disney+ series instead. They were not received well.

The highest-rated episode of “Obi-Wan Kenobi” was a Darth Vader cameo in the season finale, an 8.4 on seriesgraph.com. The lowest episode was 6.4 and the rest averaged around 7.5.

“Book of Boba Fett” was deeply unpopular in general discourse, and its two highest-rated episodes (episodes five and six, rated 9.1 and 9.2 respectively) were essentially season 2.5 for “The Mandalorian.”

Even “The Mandalorian” fell from grace with a flat season three, which all but erased a phenomenal season two finale (rated 9.8).

Director of the series, Jon Favreau, wrote the script for season four, but Hollywood labor disputes in 2023 delayed production. During that time Lucasfilm decided to pivot and make “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” and it was officially announced in January of 2024.

The story was completely different from the planned season four for two reasons: the change in structure from TV series to movie and to use less material dependent on earlier seasons to accommodate viewers who hadn’t seen the show.

Without going into too many spoilers, Disney clearly wanted their return to theaters to be “safe.”

It reverts to the episodic nature of the earlier “Mandalorian” seasons, which I think was the best period for the show, and the story doesn’t go very deep.

Din Djarin (the Mandalorian, for anyone who didn’t already know) is rounding up Imperial remnants for the New Republic with his foundling Grogu (Baby Yoda, as much as I can’t stand that name) and the two get up to a few separate adventures in the 132-minute runtime.

It was a fun spectacle with some good action and decent special effects (and a ton of cute Grogu moments), but it didn’t feel as grandiose as you expect a Star Wars movie to be.

The plot didn’t really have any stakes and we don’t get much character growth outside of Grogu taking care of an injured Djarin in act three, which might’ve been my favorite part of the movie.

“The Mandalorian and Grogu” was also the first-ever Star Wars movie to be filmed entirely in one state — California.

My gut feeling is that Disney was scared to invest too much into a spinoff Star Wars movie, given how the last go-round went with “Solo.”

The budget for “The Mandalorian and Grogu” was $165 million, and as of May 31, it’s made $246 million worldwide and $137 million domestically.

As a rule of thumb, movies need to make 2.5 times their production budget to break even; that’s in consideration of the profit split with theaters, the marketing budget and other costs.

It’s uncertain if “The Mandalorian and Grogu” will even recover its costs, much less profit, after taking a 69% dive in Week 2 at the box office. It earned $81.6 million in the opening weekend, but only $25 million in the second, according to The Numbers.

It also fell to third place domestically, and with a stacked June lineup that includes “Toy Story 5,” “Masters of the Universe,” “Scary Movie 6” and “Supergirl,” it’ll be an uphill battle.

I want this movie to be successful because I love Star Wars and want it back on the big screen. I want Star Wars that tells new, interesting stories and isn’t just a vessel for cameos or flashy fights that don’t mean anything (Maul: Shadow Lord).

The original trilogy changed the hero story with one of the best protagonists of all time, Luke Skywalker. It told a tale of fighting not only darkness in the world, but the darkness within yourself.

The prequel trilogy, even with its flaws, told the story of how a democracy falls into fascism. It showed the dangers of obsessive attachment and the lust for power.

The sequel trilogy warns against the dangers of neo-fascism and offers a lesson in confronting your failures, not running away from them.

It’s okay to have a fun romp every once in a while, but Star Wars is a medium for some of the best stories in cinematic history. George Lucas made his living on pushing the boundaries of the industry, and it feels like Disney is scared, or has no interest, in doing the same. It feels like their motivations are purely financial.

I’m not sure if a box office failure will teach Disney the wrong lesson again (looking at you, “Solo”), but if a safe movie is what they need to get back on the bike, so be it. Here’s hoping this is the next era of great Star Wars movies.