In this free-for-all-Friday Trent gives his review of the latest Star Wars films.
Transcript:
Trent Horn (00:00):
So a few weeks ago, I took my kids to see the Mandalorian and Grogu and I have to give you my belated review of the movie. Why? Because Mondays and Wednesdays while we talk about apologetics and theology, Friday we talk about whatever I want to talk about. It’s Free For All Friday. And today I’m just going to give you a movie review and a little bit of insight on this movie and why Star Wars seems kind of dead to me. Oh, it’s so sad because I was a Star Wars kid, grew up on the original trilogy. I mean, I’m a millennial Star Wars kid, so I grew up with it on VHS. My boss, John Sorensen, he regales me with stories about going to see the original trilogy in theaters. And when he went to see the original trilogy, he just had to sit in the aisles of the movie theater because it was packed and it’s Gen X, 70s, 80s, they don’t care about fire codes, things like that.
(00:54):
Oh, I wish I could have been there. I at least was part of the big pizazz of waiting in line for the theaters to go and see Lord of the Rings. So I guess as a millennial, Lord of the Rings was my Star Wars. The Star Wars for Gen Xers was probably Lord of the Rings for me and my other millennial friends. Others might have wanted to put Harry Potter. I mean, Lord of the Rings, I think it was bigger than Harry Potter. I mean, it was huge, obviously. So the point was that I grew up on Star Wars, the VHSs. I have still managed to track down the original theatrical releases on DVD because most of the DVDs are a special edition where Lucas gets his litle grubby hands in the editing bay, adds a bunch of unnecessary CGI creatures that don’t need to be there, that weren’t in the original, changes it so that Grudo shoots first instead of Han shoots first because he’s a rogue and completely defeats the purpose of understanding who he is as a rogue.
(01:51):
I don’t even get me started on that, but I grew up with that and I loved it. Then when the prequels came out, I thought, oh, this is okay. Little kiddish, but at least Star Wars is here. I’m all right with that, but there was a lot to make fun of. Revenge of the Syth was cool. I liked that. There was still a lot to make fun of. The dialogue and the acting, not great. Even when you watch the original trilogy, I know the acting isn’t stellar, but it is not as cheesy as in the prequels. But the prequels were fine. They were attempting to tell their own unique original story. And so I appreciated that. I was in college when those came. I think when I was in high school for Phantom Menace, then by the time Revenge of the Sith came out, I think I was about halfway through college and I liked it.
(02:35):
And so I’ve always known about Star Wars Lore. I mean, really, one of my first cinematic experiences, I think I was six years old and watched Empire Strikes Back and I was just blown away by the opening Hawth sequence. I thought it was just the coolest thing ever. I’ve loved showing this to my kids, showing Star Wars to them, playing Star Wars Battlefront with my oldest son. Actually, I don’t really like newer video games as much, but 2017 Star Wars Battlefront, when he and I team up to take down the ATAT Walkers is super fun. It’s a cool thing to get to do with your kids. So I appreciate that. But there hasn’t been much that’s come out of the Star Wars universe that I’ve really enjoyed. That’s probably because Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. Now there were some good things that came out of that.
(03:23):
2016’s Rogue One is really good. Normally I am a Jedi of a contest. I don’t believe in Star Wars after Return of the Jedi, except for like the Clone Wars cartoon. That’s pretty decent. But also I do like Rogue One. So I’m willing to slot that in there as a story as part of the original trilogy. I thought that’s done very well. But then they did the sequel trilogy. I mean, Force Awakens was fine. It was just a retelling of New Hope, reskinned. And I’m like, okay, it’s not terrible, but it’s not great either. And then everything just falls at Last Jedi. I am an official Last Jedi Hater. It’s a terrible movie. If you think it’s good, you’re just wrong. I’m sorry. You can subvert things, that’s fine, but this just spit on everything Star Wars was. And then they had to undo everything when Abrams was brought back to do episode nine to do the finishing of the trology.
(04:12):
I didn’t even bother to see that movie. I knew it would be terrible and I still haven’t seen it and I probably never will see it. Somehow Palpatine return. No, I’m not going to have any of that. So aside from Rogue One and then seeing the sequel trilogies, no, I’m not interested in this. This is terrible. I’m not going to do this anymore. But there was some good Star Wars streaming on Disney+. My kids really enjoyed The Mandalorian, so I’d let them watch that. And then Mandalorian Grogu comes out in theaters. And here’s the thing. I knew it was probably going to be a bad movie, but it’s so funny. It’s like I rewarded them when I shouldn’t. It’s like politicians who are bad, but you still vote for them. Don’t vote for them. But I’m like, yeah, but I don’t want to vote for the other guy.
(04:56):
So in this case, it’s more, I rewarded the studio when I should not have. I took my kids to see the Mandalorian and Grogu because I’m usually sad there’s barely any movies to take kids to. There’s hardly any just good kid films that are not woke, that are not garbage. The last movies that were good that I took my kids to were probably … What did I take them to? I took them to see the Super Mario movie. I thought that was really good. They really enjoyed that because the Nintendo Corporation really made sure there would be a good movie and not ruin their brand. So I took them to see that. They enjoyed it. I took them to see Project Hail Mary, my older two. They got a little scared at parts, but they still liked it, but there’s just not like an easy family friend.
(05:37):
There’s not a lot of easy family friendly movies. Oh, the Minecraft movie. I took them to see that. They liked it. It was fine. Not a lot though. But I remember when I was a kid, there’s always stuff with the cinemas to go as a kid or go with your family to go and see. And now it’s just like they don’t have that. So I went, took them and what is my ultimate take on it? It’s not a bad … So I went and I took them and here’s my take. It’s not even really a bad movie. There are bad movies. This isn’t even a movie. They’ve even come out and said that this was just a three or a four-part miniseries. There were four episodes they were going to film for the Disney Plus series and they decided to stitch them together, ramp up the CGI a little bit and then release it as a film.
(06:24):
So I got suckered for sure. But here’s the thing, Grogu is cute. I love when they look at what do audiences like. Millennials prefer and/or … I’m trying to figure what Gen Z likes, but … Yeah, sorry. It’s like Gen Alpha and Baby Boomers love Mandalorian and Grogu because they just like Grow Goo because he’s so cute. He’s the baby Yoda, the green alien guy and he was super cute. I’m going to give him that. But it was awful. It was awful because it was just like sitting down and watching four episodes of a TV show in a row. It was not a movie. It didn’t have the drama or the grit of a movie. It didn’t have the artistic quality to it like you see in Rogue One. Rogue One feels like a movie. It gives you chills. It really pulls you into the characters.
(07:07):
It’s just all interchangeable. You have the Mandalorian, this intergalactic bounty hunter with his faithful adopted son Grogu and the new Republic, whatever. I don’t even care. He’s like, ” G hunt down this guy. He’s a bad guy. How? Well, you got to go and talk to the Huts and the Huts won’t help till you go and rescue their son. Go do this, go do that. Fly here, do this, fly here, do that. “It’s a fetch quest and it’s boring. And you can tell as you watch it where each episode ends and the next episode begins and it’s like, ” Oh my goodness. “It doesn’t have that weight of a film, so it’s utterly forgettable, but it was serviceable. My kids liked it. They thought the action was good. It was good but not too scary. They loved Grogu and it was just a nice time to have Star Wars at the theaters.
(07:53):
So it was nice to be able to do that. And I figured I might as well because I don’t know the next time there will be a good Star Wars at the theaters and maybe there shouldn’t be. Maybe there can be a new thing people create that fills people with adventure and wonder and sends them off. But I will tell you this, I think this is really going to show that Star Wars is dead or it’s dying. It did so poorly at the box office because word of mouth, it plummeted like 80% in its first weekend. Did real badly. Why? Because people like me say,” Oh, how was the movie? Oh, it was barely a movie. Don’t go see it unless you feel like babysitting your kids with it and just want to encourage them. Or no, sorry, it was a 70% decline. That’s still terrible.
(08:27):
But let’s take a look here at some of the figures. So it says with a four day Memorial Day total, 102 million worldwide opening of $165 million. Those numbers would be respectable for many franchises, but they’re modest by Star Wars standards, including the Force Awakens, which opened to $247 million domestically, which is a lot more given even the amount of inflation that’s just happened in 10 years. Even solo, a Star Wars story long considered the franchise biggest disappointment, opened slightly higher during its Memorial Day debut in 2018. Adjusted for inflation, the gap between those earlier films becomes even more significant. So had a huge drop, the worst performing Star Wars films and several factors explained the decline. Star Wars no longer feels like a rare event. Since the launch of Disney Plus, Lucasfilm released multiple live action and animated series creating a steady stream of content.
(09:18):
This attracted subscribers, but it also reduced the sense of anticipation at new Star Wars projects. It says, “For Disney implications extend beyond a single movie, Star Wars is evaluable because of merchandise sales, theme parks, licensing agreements.” I will say that Star Wars land, Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland is pretty cool. It’s done really well. When you go there, if you’re a Star Wars fan, you will get like chills, especially at night. It’s a very cool place to walk around. They do a lot to make it really immersive. So I appreciate that. I think they’re still going to try to release stuff. They’re doing Star Wars Star Fighter in 2027. Whether those films can reignite whitespread enthusiasm remains unclear, but they cannot assume Star Wars name alone will bring blockbusters success. No, of course they can’t. And I appreciate that films like Backrooms or Obsession are doing so well because even if they’re not original IP, they take things that are cool ideas that have not been driven into the dust for 30 years or ground down to dust and give them a big screen treatment.
(10:20):
And they try really hard to have actually good actors, good productions that are involved, compelling cinema, not just slop. And that’s what you can tell Mandolla and Grogu. It feels like slop. We all feel that. That’s why Project Hail Mary was so good because they used audio animatronics. They barely use CGI. CGI is just salt on the meal, not the meal, not a block of salt to eat. And you can tell when it’s overwhelmed with it, it doesn’t feel like a movie. It just feels like you’re watching a video game. I was actually reading a graphic. It was really interesting. When it comes to GI, we’re going to hit diminishing returns. So it showed reproducing a statue if you have only a hundred triangles so you can barely tell what it is. Then a thousand triangles, you get more and then 10,000 triangles. Oh, I can really see the statue now.
(11:08):
Then you do 100,000 triangles. There’s a way bigger jump from a hundred triangles to a thousand triangles to recreate a statue than there is from 10,000 to 100,000. That’s why it’s crazy when you look in the past like video games. Look at video games in the past … Well, look at it this way. Video game technology, like what you see in video games, how much it changed from like 1985 Super Mario Brothers to 2005 Halo, the jump. And then from 2005 to 2025, not that much. Red Deb Redemption is really good. I’ll give you that, but not as dramatic. So we’re hitting diminishing returns. You can make it photorealistic. There’s only so much you can do and it’s still going to look the same because you can’t add any more information to it. So I think when they’re relying heavily on CGI in this way, you can’t just poop out films in this way, slap Star Wars on it and expect it to be successful.
(12:01):
So that was my review of Mandalorian and Grogu. Is it worth … By the time you listen to this, it probably won’t even be in theaters. Is it worth it to watch on streaming? Well, hey, if you have it already on Disney+, your kids might enjoy it. Should you go out of your way to see it? As an adult? Probably not. There’s probably other things you can watch. I hear and/or is good. Maybe I’ll give that a shot. But thank you guys so much for listening to my review and hope you all have a very blessed weekend.