Making this video brings me no joy. I gave Star Wars:The Mandalorian & Grogu one and a half stars on Letterboxd, and that rating is essentially me saying I was apathetic rather than angry. I have two Star Wars tattoos. I was ride or die for the television run — Mandalorian, Ahsoka, even Book of Boba Fett. I know this world deeply. I *wanted* to like this movie. And instead, the first live-action Star Wars film in seven years felt like four mediocre episodes of the show stitched together and given a theatrical release. Less impactful than Solo: A Star Wars Story. That's where we are.

The story follows Din Djarin chasing down Rotta the Hutt — yes, baby Stinky from *The Clone Wars Movie* — through a series of fetch quests that feel like they were pulled from the animated series, thrown in a blender, and poured onto a screen. There are some bright spots: Martin Scorsese as Hugo Durant is an absolute blast, and the long-overdue credits recognition for suit performers Brendan Wayne and Lateef Croter alongside Pedro Pascal is genuinely great. But the soul of what made the Mandalorian special — the religion, the armor, the helmet, the unique bond between Din and Grogu — is nowhere in this movie. None of it is addressed in any meaningful way.

What makes this so frustrating is that there *was* a plan. The original vision was to converge Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka into one massive story — likely centered on Grand Admiral Thrawn — and that would have *earned* a theatrical release. Instead, we got the lowest common denominator version of what this could have been. You only get one shot at a Mandalorian and Grogu movie, and this was it. I'm not reviewing the movie I wanted to see; I'm reviewing the one they made. And the one they made didn't work for me on almost any level.