Star Wars Needs to “Up Its Game” For The Mandalorian & Grogu, Admits Creator

After seven years away from the big screen, Star Wars is finally returning to movie theaters this summer — but not with a continuation of the Skywalker Saga or a new spinoff story a la Rogue One. Instead, Lucasfilm is releasing The Mandalorian and Grogu, a follow-up to the hit streaming series The Mandalorian. While the TV show excels at feeling cinematic, immersing viewers in classic Star Wars locales and set pieces, film is still a different medium that requires the creative team to paint on a much larger canvas. Fortunately, director Jon Favreau has plenty of experience in that realm and took the necessary steps to ensure The Mandalorian and Grogu looks great on the big screen.

During an appearance at the Star Wars: Most Wanted event (via Screen Rant), Favreau shed light on his approach for The Mandalorian and Grogu from a technical perspective. “We gotta up our game now for the movie theater, and that means taller aspect ratios for IMAX, building sets that take full advantage of,” he said. “That making the visual effects of the quality and caliber that, you know, that we have to notch everything up and then the storytelling as well.”

He continued, “We want to take you on an adventure, and that adventure has to fill up the screen and has to be something where people at this moment in time when so much is competing for your attention, that you’re gonna stop what you’re doing and you’re gonna go to a movie theater, and you’re gonna sit down in that movie theater, and you’re not gonna be able to pause it and you’re not gonna be able to eat the food out of your refrigerator, and you have to go there and you have to have such a good experience.”

Lucasfilm Has To Show Why The Mandalorian and Grogu Needed To Be a Movie

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing The Mandalorian and Grogu at this stage in the pre-release phase is justifying the shift from TV to film. Favreau has the right idea about “upping our game” with regard to the production design and visual effects, but that arguably may not be enough. The Mandalorian has very high production values and boasts its own revolutionary visual effects (The Volume, which was a game changer in terms of virtual production). On The Mandalorian, Favreau and Co. went to such great lengths to adhere to the traditional Star Wars aesthetic that images from the episodes wouldn’t look out of place in one of the Star Wars movies.

So far, the Mandalorian and Grogu marketing campaign hasn’t done a great job at underscoring why this needed to be a film. The biggest takeaway from the underwhelming teaser trailer released last fall was that it felt like a preview for The Mandalorian Season 4 instead of a new Star Wars movie. On one hand, that sentiment highlights how successful Favreau was at making the TV show feel cinematic, but it’s also a bad omen for the film’s box office prospects. The Mandalorian is a brand people associate with Disney+, and as we’ve seen with Pixar’s recent box office woes, once audiences make that kind of connection, it’s hard to break the trend. Knowing The Mandalorian and Grogu will be on Disney+ soon after a short theatrical window makes it easier to wait for streaming.

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As Lucasfilm approaches the home stretch of the Mandalorian and Grogu promotional campaign, the marketing department needs to go the extra mile to encourage general audiences to make the trip to the theater — especially after the divisive Super Bowl spot didn’t do much to build up hype. Favreau mentioned they had to “notch everything up,” including the storytelling. Perhaps it’s time for Lucasfilm to shed some light on what the movie’s actual plot is. So far, discussions about The Mandalorian and Grogu have made a point to hide narrative details. Lucasfilm is famous for its high levels of secrecy, but the next trailer should do something to establish the stakes of the film, giving fans a reason to care about the story.

Nobody is saying Lucasfilm has to spell out the entire plot; if there are any intriguing twists, those should be kept under lock and key to preserve any surprises. But the longer Lucasfilm goes without highlighting any of the story, the more concerning it becomes that the studio doesn’t see the story as a selling point (or feels there isn’t all that much story to sell). What’s confusing about Lucasfilm’s marketing approach so far is that there are materials that highlight why The Mandalorian Grogu can be exciting and cinematic, the studio just isn’t using them yet. It might be part of the plan, holding back the real money shots for the final wave. Hopefully that’s the case, or the film could be in trouble.

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