[Thor Joachim Haga]

Just came back from THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU.

I mean, it’s a cute film, fairly innocous. For older kids, really. And Jon Favreau is no auteur, so pretty straightforward craftmanship. It’s rather episodic (I think it was intended as a fourth season of the series until it was adapted into a film?). Lots of ‘meet cute’ elements, be it baby Yoda or those tiny repairmen creatures (relatives of Babu Frink, I think his name was from the sequels). And building on lore from the extended universe, including that old CLONE WARS film (Filoni’s legacy). I loved a “solo Grogu” sequence along the way there, which reminded me of Jim Henson’s masterpiece THE DARK CRYSTAL. The episodic nature of it can be considered a strength, in a way, with many “mini films”, with their own sets of stories. Nice to see Sigourney Weaver in there (three major sci fi crossovers for her now), and a fun, little bit voiced by Martin Scorsese, of all people.

Göransson’s music was atrocious, but I expected nothing else. For orchestral music, he can only aspire to third-rate Bill Conti at his best, and the rest is rather meandering and simplistic. Some promising synth bits for a city in there, but it never really went anywhere. Göransson has proudly inherited the mantle as film music’s most overrated composer after Giacchino.

In short, I quite liked the film as pure storytelling, but only limited bits of anything beyond that.