"The Mandalorian and Grogu" opens May 22 — the first Star Wars theatrical film since 2019's "The Rise of Skywalker." Jon Favreau directs; Pedro Pascal returns as Din Djarin. Reviews dropped around May 18 to a mixed reception: a Rotten Tomatoes score in the low-to-mid 60s on roughly 100 reviews, and a Metacritic around 55. Made for about $165 million — cheap by Star Wars standards — it's tracking for a record-low franchise opening, roughly $80-100 million domestic.

Here's the trailer:

1. Star Wars Is Back, and It's Fun (Courtney Howard, Screen Daily, Empire)

A brisk, well-crafted family adventure is exactly what the franchise needed back on the big screen.

A fun, well-made crowd-pleaser is not a lesser thing — it's the assignment. Variety's Courtney Howard called it "a ton of fun" and "a perfect Summer movie," action-packed "with a lot of humor & heart." Screen Daily praised a "safe but satisfying" jump to cinemas — "well-crafted, brisk and entertaining" — and Empire said the big-screen comeback "finds the way." The Din-Grogu dynamic and Ludwig Goransson's score do the heavy lifting.

After seven years away, a confident, self-contained adventure is a win. Critic Simon Thompson called Favreau "a safe pair of hands" and said the film "puts Star Wars back on theatrical track." The argument is that the saga doesn't need every entry to reinvent itself — lowered-stakes, well-executed nostalgia is a feature, not a failure.

2. It's Just a Very Long TV Episode (Owen Gleiberman, Pete Hammond, Slant)

Upscaling streaming episodes to the multiplex doesn't make it cinema — it makes the franchise's exhaustion visible.

Putting a TV show on a bigger screen doesn't turn it into a movie. Variety chief critic Owen Gleiberman wrote that the film "only pretends to be a real 'Star Wars' movie," fun "in a slightly flat way." Slant Magazine called it "a very long episode of television," and IndieWire's review branded it "Star Wars at its most generic," a supersized episode; critics across outlets likened it to a few stretched-out installments of the TV show.

The harshest verdict isn't that it's bad — it's that it doesn't matter. Deadline's Pete Hammond found the "Star Wars magic" far away and called Grogu "a clunky animatronic irritation"; a sentiment recurred across reviews that it may not be the worst Star Wars movie, but it might be the most inconsequential. SlashFilm was blunter: "Star Wars has never felt duller or more mundane."

3. Forget Good — Can It Sell Tickets? (Shawn Robbins, Fandango)

The real test isn't the reviews. It's whether couch fans will pay for a ticket — and Disney built in a hedge.

The number that matters is at the box office, not on Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango analytics director Shawn Robbins says the big question is "whether the streaming audience converts into a theatrical audience," with word of mouth as "the big X factor." This is the first Star Wars film since the franchise pivoted to Disney+, and tracking points to a record-low series opening, roughly $80-100 million domestic.

A cheap Star Wars movie changes the math that sank Solo. At about $165 million, the film cost roughly half what recent Star Wars features did, so even a worst-ever opening can clear break-even — unlike 2018's "Solo," which opened in the same range but lost money against a roughly $300 million budget. The bet is that a beloved TV property can rehabilitate Star Wars theatrical on a budget.

Where This Lands

The defenders say a brisk, funny, well-made adventure is exactly what the franchise should put on screen after seven years away, and the mixed reviews still tilt more fresh than rotten. The skeptics say that is the problem — a competent, low-stakes episode upscaled to the multiplex is content, not cinema, and proof the saga is coasting. The box-office watchers say none of that is the real question, because Disney made the film cheap enough that a modest opening still counts as a win.

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