"Star Wars has always been big on prophecy. Yoda peers into the future like Nostradamus with messed-up syntax, the Emperor cackles that everything is proceeding exactly as he has foreseen, Darth Vader breathes doom through the front grille of his shiny death helmet. And yet not even the most omniscient of Jedi could have predicted that the franchise responsible for practically inventing the modern Hollywood blockbuster would end up as a TV-centric operation with only occasional forays on to the big screen."
"The most recent Disney Star Wars film, JJ Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker, did not so much conclude the long-running space saga as destroy several decades of perfectly serviceable mythology and ruin all sense of congruence with previous films. It was frantic, weirdly apologetic (about previous instalment The Last Jedi) and overstuffed with dodgy fan service. It was essentially a $590m act of narrative panic."
"All of which means that Jon Favreau's big screen outing for the masked bounty hunter and his perky little Force goblin sidekick has a lot of heavy lifting to do. The Mandalorian and Grogu needs to convince casual viewers they do not need to have completed 23 hours of bounty-hunting homework. It must make the galaxy feel big again. And it needs to prove that Baby Yoda is not just Star Wars' cutest merchandising event, but a character capable of opening up new territory for this most venerable of space operas."
"The real zinger here would be to finally take us to the mysterious home planet of the species that gave us Yoda and Grogu. We might learn more about Star Wars and the nature of the Force: are our big-eared friends once-in-a-millennium cosmic accidents, or merely the most notable graduat"
Star Wars has relied on prophecy and foreknowledge, yet the franchise has shifted toward television with only occasional theatrical releases. More than six years have passed since the last Star Wars film, and the most recent Disney movie, The Rise of Skywalker, disrupted established mythology and continuity. The film was frantic, apologetic toward earlier installments, and filled with questionable fan service, leaving narrative coherence damaged. The Mandalorian and Grogu must attract casual viewers without requiring extensive prior viewing. The story must restore a sense of a vast galaxy and demonstrate that Baby Yoda is more than a merchandising phenomenon. A major opportunity is exploring the mysterious home planet of Yoda and Grogu’s species and learning what their existence reveals about the Force.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]