The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

I checked my watch so many times.

The Mandalorian and Grogu was interesting for several minutes—maybe a quarter of an hour or so—when the helmet was off; we finally got some emotion from the protagonist. A short list of other things I liked:

The monsters in that pit were cool, as was the poisonous pink Cthulhu thing, plus it was in the water.

I liked Jeremy Allen White's character for the most part, although he has no depth whatsoever: I think he said "I'm not like my dad" about five separate times. 

There is a short but cool chase sequence after he escapes the fighting pit.

Mostly, though, this feels like something all of us have seen before. And if the Mandalorian was supposed to be somehow morally ambiguous (I thought I read that somewhere), what we get in this film is very, very clear good vs. very, very clear evil.

Also, PG-13 movies are an outrage. This movie is filled with violence from start to finish. Some of it is committed for almost no reason at all. The Mandalorian shoots up a bar to get someone's attention, killing (one presumes) many people. But it's PG-13 so we never see anyone suffer or die, we can just enjoy all the shooting and punching and kicking and stabbing without reckoning with the pain that might cause to the actual bodies of humans and animals. Fun for the whole family!