To say I was actively aghast at every second of this movie is not an exaggeration. Just as it brings me no pleasure to report how creatively and emotionally bankrupt this entire project is, there was not a single moment in its two-hour-plus runtime that gave me even one modicum of joy.

Matt Oakes at Silver Screen Riot. Harsh, but entirely fair.

I’m a Star Wars fan generally. Original trilogy is the cinematic high watermark, obviously, a life-changing trilogy at the time. Prequels felt underwhelming until we got what we were waiting for in Revenge Of The Sith – although now I can really appreciate how much Lucas cared about them.

And from their thematic and artistic blueprints Andor picked up the ball and almost effortlessly booted it into orbit. It’s an incredible achievement in every single department, one of the greatest political espionage dramas I’ve ever seen, that just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe.

The sequels? I just don’t know how they fucked that up so badly. Who starts making the most eagerly awaited final trilogy of a three-trilogy series without the first single fucking idea what the actual story was, and then blunders through the next two equally blind to where they were going, let alone what they were trying to say? An incredible opportunity pissed entirely up the wall by JJ Abrams, Rian Johnson, Bob Iger, Kathleen Kennedy and whoever the fuck else was producing and writing that incoherent shite.

(I do appreciate in light of the whole Ben Solo movie debacle that Kathleen Kennedy may perhaps have been the one keeping things from getting worse on the sequels, but having no idea where they were going when they started seems reckless to me.)

I loved The Mandalorian when it started, but the last season felt like a bit of a slog. It never felt like ‘first Star Wars movie in years’ material though – it’s a TV show. So I’d no interest whatsoever when it arrived in cinemas out last month, and not much at all when it landed on Disney+ this month. But last night I made myself sit through it, and I don’t know if I’ve fallen asleep in a film more often than this one. Every time I was jolted out of my slumber I was surprised to find it was still going. It’s all just so flat and pointless. And it goes on, and on, and on.

And I find it especially galling that Pedro Pascal is still getting all the attention when… he’s not really The Mandalorian. All your favourite parts are actually Brendan Wayne and Lateef Crowder – if Mando has his helmet on it’s almost never Pascal.

I was going to go into more detail, but then I found this review by Matt Oakes at Silver Screen Riot and honestly it says absolutely everything I was thinking.

The Mandalorian and Grogu does not function as an essential standalone feature. More damningly, it does not function as a feature at all. It has no cinematic shape, no emotional progression, no sense of escalation, and no reason to exist on a big screen beyond the desperate hope that the Star Wars brand still means something. It barely even works as a “special event” super-episode of the already-fading television show.

The biggest problem with The Mandalorian and Grogu is not simply that it is boring, ugly, or dramatically inert. It is that it barely qualifies as a “movie”. It has the shape and style of content, not cinema. There is no real journey here, emotional or otherwise. The characters do not change. Their relationships do not deepen. Their worldview is not challenged. They begin the film as exactly who they are and end it in the same place, only with more runtime behind them. This is not even “there and back again” storytelling; it is “there, then over there, then another place, and now the credits.” It plays like an episode of television that forgot to have an arc, and then somehow got inflated to feature length.

Agreed. It’s so flat that getting all the way through it felt like an oppressively boring chore – it’s a Star Wars movie, man.

Except, that’s the thing. It’s not much of a movie at all, let alone a Star Wars one. It’s just Content with a capital C. It’s here to pad things out, to keep empty minds satiated, to keep the brand in the consciousness – “hey Star Wars still does movies!”. It looks and feels like the brand treading water because that’s exactly what it is.

At this point I’d be almost completely done with new Star Wars stuff, were it not for the thrill I still get even thinking about Andor, and the rocket I really hoped it would have shot up Filoni’s arse, inspiring his Lucasfilm to rise above cranking out filler Content like this. I’ve a lot of respect for him here.

Or were it not for the fun I had with the criminally under-rated Skeleton Crew, which really is The Goonies In Space, and it knows it. It wants to be that, and it does it absolutely brilliantly, it’s a really good ride. Even Jude Law is great.

All I’ve got left to really hope for is Ryan Gosling and Shawn Levy’s Starfighter film, in 2027 I think. Ryan Gosling lifts just about everything he’s in, and Shawn Levy’s made a lot of fun, big-budget, effect-heavy popcorn movies. So it should at least be good fun, and I’d hope Gosling wouldn’t sign on without a decent story.