I was a little shocked to learn that Star Wars hasn’t been in cinemas with a new film since 2019. Surely the pandemic played its part in the lack of a movie slate plus a shift towards TV for their streaming service as well. But it is clear as we sit here on Star Wars Day 2026 with a new movie on the way that these choices has effected things in ways that a re probably more negative than positive.
The first big show to come from the Disney+ was of course The Mandalorian. Sold as a Star Wars western of sorts that would see the audience follow a very cool looking bounty hunter on a different adventure every week. It started extremely strong with the reveal of a character that was the same species as Yoda at the end of the pilot that really did take the internet by storm almost instantly. It’s hard to imagine life without Grogu now but in the moment he was everywhere. The show brought fans some great moments and I suspect was expanding upon a bit more than they had intended when they started. You get access to legacy characters like Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett as well as animated TV favorites like Ahoska Tano.
I think pound for pound as a Star Wars fan the show is more good than bad. There were some curious decisions made down the stretch like combing major plot lines of the Mando show with The Book of Boba Fett. It left like the creatives could have their cake and eat it too. Shows merged together to the point where you weren’t sure what episodes of what series you needed to see to keep and you’d guess that this did fragment and eventually breakdown any sort of casual audience.
That leads us to this May when The Mandalorian and Grogu hits theaters. Grogu made a surprise cameo with his co stars Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver during the Academy Awards. A bit that was pretty fun and had the help of a committed Kate Hudson. It was an announcement on the biggest movie night of the year that Star Wars would be back in cinemas.
The question I keep asking myself about this movie is simply will anyone care? I’m sure there will be hundreds of millions of dollars made off the various families that go because it’s Star Wars and their kids love Grogu. As well as the Star Wars die hards like myself that watch everything. But at the end of the day does the wider culture and movie going public have the appetite for this movie?
In a conversation on The Town with Matt Belloni the films director Jon Favreau talked about the serialized nature of the original movie. How you are sort of thrown into the action in real time like it was an out of place episode of television. Apparently they plan on taking a similar approach to this one as well. The idea being that they can get the fans of the show but a casual movie goer wouldn’t be put off by having to catch up. I think in a vacuum it’s a good idea and it sounds like Ryan Goslings Star Wars: Starfighter is taking a similar approach. My issue with it is that the characters in this movie have long been established already and there is a narrative arc that has already started. It runs the risk of having a Star Wars movie feel….inconsequential. The box office projections are pretty good in regular movie terms. But by Star Wars standards it seems low. It will be interesting to see what type of audience the movie has.
All I have been able to gather from the trailers is that the fellas are going on missions given to them by the Sigourney Weaver character to clean up what is left of the Empire. But there is also some stuff with the Hutt clan going on. A post Jabba situation so I’m kinda curious to see what is going there. The last time we saw Jabba’s son Rotta was in the Clone Wars animated feature film. This time he looks like a fully grown adult that is also a gladiator of some kind. You have my attention. But yeah I don’t know we will see how it goes but I have mixed feelings and I’m prepared for the worst.
Though I think generally speaking it’s a good time to be a Star Wars fan. As a movie guy I’ve been a little down all the streaming content however if you LOVE the franchise there is a lot of stuff for you to engage in. Most of The Mandalorian and all of Andor is spectacular. The Obi-Wan show was a bit divisive but I was okay with it. Plus all the other live action TV, animated stuff and the movies. Not to mention the novels, comic books and video games. There is as much accessible Star Wars now than ever and it’s genuinely awesome.
As for the movies I’m excited to see what comes next even if I’m a little skeptical of the movie this year. I think Dave Filoni felt what it was like to be in charge of a franchise like this pretty quickly. Three years ago he was hero of the fanbase and considered a genius. Today he is now the chief creative officer at Lucasfilm and while he still has his fans (me among them) his approval rating has dipped. I do think that he has the best sense of what “Star Wars” is of anyone that could have that job.
I have to assume Rey will come back at some point. There was talk of her being in a movie I just don’t know if that has changed with the new leadership. You also hear rumors of them going back into the Saga and making the next trilogy. I’m open to that if they can learn from their mistakes after the dreadful handling of The Rise of Skywalker. The fact of the matter is that like the prequels the generation that grew up loving those movies will soon reclaim them just as the Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones has been. So this idea that these films are some scared text that needs to be held amber never worked for me. I’m open to more as long as the story is right and they keep the creative spirit in tact.
Another thing that I think we all have to accept is the fact that Star Wars has graduated from a franchise and has become a genre all its own. Like the Western or the Noir you can use the techniques developed by ILM for Star Wars and the aesthetic of the world to tell all kinds of stories. We’ve seen that with the anime series Star Wars Visions that has yielded some great results. I know that the fan base cares deeply about cannon and the “rules” of the world and I used to be too. But as I get older the more I feel like while I want to see a continuous continuity on screen at the cinema and I’d love to see them use the cinema and other platforms to try new things and create new characters.
I hope you all have a good Star Wars Day and I please considering following my Letterboxd where you can see reviews on many of the Star Wars films as well as listed like the one below, my Star Wars movie rankings.
The Ambassador Almanac 