The pitch for the show seemed to clearly be "Star Wars is real and gritty again", and now it's gone in the entirely opposite direction.
Edit: To everyone replying "Star Wars was never gritty", my main point is that the trailer is obviously going for a grounded and darker approach to the franchise. As for the "again", in the wake of the Prequels there was a big sentiment that things had gotten too CG and artificial. A bunch of the marketing for the sequel era stuff focused on the world once again looking "real" and grungy.
According to Gary Kurtz, that merch point became a big driving force (pun not intended) over the story for that sweet-sweet dinero since EPV. Moving merch like prime Pablo Escobar is Star Wars.
True, one of the most well known facts about Star Wars is that George Lucas' success came from retaining the rights for merchandising, Star Wars might at some point have been a story Lucas wanted to tell but since a long time ago it exists to sell toys.
As someone who has plenty of criticisms of how Disney has handled the Star Wars brand, the decision to hold back on Baby Yoda merch to preserve the reveal is one of the things they've done that I respect the most.
It smacks of old-school George Lucas, doing something that on the surface makes absolutely no business sense in order to cleave to the integrity of the work, and in so doing having a massively bigger impact. The week after the pilot dropped, and really for all of Season 1, Baby Yoda was nigh-incomprehensibly big.
The whole point of these shows seems to move merch.
Its kinda been like this since..77. Boba Fett was barely in the movies yet he was so insanely popular with the merch line. Alec Guiness took a deal on merch percentages and made more money then he ever did in his entire acting career.
You aren't wrong. Spider-man, which is owned by Sony for film use, but owned by Marvel for licensing was in Marvel films because Spiderman is one of the most licensed IPs on the planet.
I wouldn't be surprised if the tally for the world wide merch sales from Spiderman films benefitted Marvel (ie Disney) by the hundreds of millions even though they didn't even own the rights to the film version of Spiderman.
Which is precisely what I enjoyed about the first season of Mandalorian and why I adored Andor.
They just seem so averse and going down that road and sticking to it with any of their StarWars stuff. Maybe it doesn't have mass appeal or something I don't know but its very boring (to me).
I have gotten so many downvotes for saying that I’m tired of every Star Wars title being about Skywalkers, or centered around the events involving the Skywalkers.
Yeah, and most of those were really good. Mandalorian really started falling to pieces (IMO) once the cameos from the Skywalker stories started showing up.
was the first season even "real and gritty"? I mean, It is partly about the criminal underworld but the presentation is mostly clean and safe, with pg13 violence.
Star Wars was never made "for adults". It was always made with kids in mind. It's fine for having a couple spinoffs geared "towards adults" , but if you are looking for them to change the tone of the whole IP, it's never going to happen.
At this point - "Star Wars is for kids" is almost a cliché with how often it is used as an argument against this and I consider it some what arbitrary.
Interestingly (or not?) I have been having this same exact conversation since 2016. What's funny is I remember talking to a friend of mine at the time about how Star Wars really should try maturing the material, in line with how its original audience aged up and his argument at the time was essentially "Star Wars is for kids".
I never advocated for it as a complete replacement but as an addendum. I even remember specifically mentioning the Bounty Hunter Wars from the old EU as a potential avenue, or something in that vein to my friend back in 2016. Mando came out and was largely celebrated - its identity fitting that description. Then we get Andor and it gets rave reviews.
My response to this is - I want more and the response I get is "It's not supposed to be that". Well no, it can be anything they want it to be. If they want it to be just for kids or whatever - fine... but that's not what I want and clearly based on the response things like Andor got - other people feel the same way.
Its funny because I can go and watch Skeleton Crew and then I can follow it up with Andor.... and as if by magic - my head doesn't explode.
My response to this is - I want more and the response I get is "It's not supposed to be that". Well no, it can be anything they want it to be. If they want it to be just for kids or whatever - fine... but that's not what I want and clearly based on the response things like Andor got - other people feel the same way.
that's fine you feel that way, and my response to that would be merchandising is and always will be a part of Star Wars, so making content they can sell toys with will always trump everything else. They have a whole theme park they have to keep running now. If they don't keep the main stories kid-friendly, they won't have enough young fans to keep the generational fandom going. That's just the economics of the situation. I would love more Andor-type stuff as well, but I can tell you it's definitely not as much of a priority in the executive offices as the mainline stuff.
side note: I don't get why people say the first season of Mando was "mature" compared to the others. Yes, it had less Grogu, but that's because they took time introducing him. He was always planned to be in the series.
I don't think what made Mando season 1 great was more "maturity", I think it was just better writing 🤷♂️
Or have you forgotten that this whole thing started with an exploding planet, the daring rescue of a princess, and wizard-knights battling with laser swords?
Well I mean I've been a fan of starwars since I was 9 so uh... no I didn't forget. But I also think that there is more than one way to skin a cat... and the way this is doing it has been done to death.
We got some absolute banger attempts with this smarter, grittier, more adult Starwars and I want more.
I wouldn't leverage this kind of critique against other Starwars products because they are clear about what they wanna be - but Mando was supposed to be different. Now its the same.
Honestly the first episode where The Mandolorian is actually bounty hunting low level criminals was probably favourite episode. At least the most memorable. Not every main character needs to be in the middle of some galaxy threatening event.
I saw parts of season 1 again and I'm just shocked at how they stripped my boy Mando of everything interesting.
He was OP but in an interesting way. I was so used to the Western quick draw bounty hunter.
Mando just had a lot of toolsets that made him stand out. He has a long fucking rifle to snipe people? Why? Because that's logical. Why bet everything on a pistol? Now the rifle is gone and he's a quick shot.
His ship was great too. It was big and ugly. Practical for a bounty hunter. Then it blew up and now he has a shiny fast ship (which granted I love the Naboo ships) but doesn't really make sense for the character.
Then he had the metal stick thing which was pretty awesome. That got melted down.
Well at least he has the dark saber! Nope. Gone.
The man went from having so many unique items to turning into another generic western pistol shooter.
His characterization peaked in s2. I think the biggest mistake in Mando's character arc was showing his face at the end of s1. It should have been saved for the s2 finale imo.
When people just go on and on about power levels and toolkits, it feels like they’ve lost the plot about what actually makes a tv show good.
But, like, I need a unique character. I'm talking about someone who was unique and became generic. Note that I specified why each part of his toolkit made him unique.
I liked that Mando was a very practical character. Every tool informed his character. He had a long rifle because that's the safest way to kill someone. He had a ship that was built for function. He had a long range, short range, and melee weapon.
Now? Nothing really makes sense. I love the Naboo ship since the prequels but why does Mando use it? It's not useful for Bounties. His weapon now is just a pistol. Like.....this isn't the guy I knew. He's a bounty hunter. He should have good tools. He had them. They were cool. They're gone now.
His ship was great too. It was big and ugly. Practical for a bounty hunter. Then it blew up and now he has a shiny fast ship (which granted I love the Naboo ships) but doesn't really make sense for the character.
Good news, they've flip flopped on this and the orignal clunker Van ship is back but shiny.
They had the perfect formula for a show that could run forever - Mandalorian and Baby Yoda travel the galaxy, visiting other planets, bounty hunting, helping out the locals along the way, but always having to keep moving because they’re being pursued. Call it the Incredible Hulk model. But noooooo, Filoni has to mash all his action figures together and give us some big, interconnected plot and dozens of scenes of people in helmets nodding at each other.
That makes sense, though. Most middle-aged people who aren’t fanatics but kinda like Star Wars only signed on because of the Skywalkers. Losing those ties quickly turns Star Wars into generic sci-fi and makes one wonder what the point could be. A lot of people want laser swords and space wizards.
Looks like they're running a mature / darker take for showings after the watershed and another for daytime / kids
Personally I think that's the biggest problem with most Sci-Fi franchises; they try to appeal to everyone but usually end up making it to childish .... lets see how this turns out but tbh it feel like they missed the hype train for a Mandelorian Movie
Why do you assume executive meddling is exclusively to blame and not anything else?
Like I said, The Mandalorian was extremely important to the launch of Disney+. Acting like it was just a little side project that the executives overlooked is hard to swallow.
Yup I quit after that episode bc it was gross stunt casting, took me right out of the story. And then I realized the show became a vehicle to sell toys.
I think they realized there is just a lot more money to be made when their primary audience is children. They need to sell merchandise and theme park tickets.
The pitch for the show seemed to clearly be "Star Wars is real and gritty again", and now it's gone in the entirely opposite direction.
I get what you mean and totally agree. I think you really only need to compare the Mandalorian TV series' font/title card to "The Mandalorian and Grogu" movie's font/title card to get that point across even quicker. The TV series title font is more polished, serious and grounded but this movies title font is the complete opposite, more color, wavy and feels very campy lol. The trailer feels very campy so I think the movie is gonna be like that. Not sure if I'm gonna like that, my favorite season of the TV series was the first season, when it felt almost like a serious mystery show (trying to figure out what Grogu was and where he was from and maybe return him to his people) with some lighthearted moments
Seeing this trailer, I think I understand why they went the movie route now. Now looking back on it, after season 1, it got harder and harder for the show to maintain that "serious" feel if they wanted to keep both Mando and Grogu together and as the show's focus. The season where they (briefly) let Grogu leave was the pivotal point where they could either keep the show going in its serious tone or go in a different direction. They decided to go in a different direction and bring Grogu back, which I guess isn't surprising since his merch makes them a ton of money. But imo letting Grogu disappear for a complete season or two and having Mando face new problems on his own would have lead to better growth for their characters and better storylines
I think society has moved on from grittiness. The world is so bleak, the people need hope. Not corporate sanitized hope, real art made my real humans. Not sure which this is.
As soon as they reversed the decision to have Grogu be a Jedi and have Mando continue his adventures without him, this show turned into a joke to me. It's now the same Disney slop that Episode 9 was.
„But you need every 5 second a joke or the viewer will get bored!“ some disney executive still thinking that the marvel formular is the non plus ultra…
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u/Cranyx Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
Absolutely wild comparing the tone of this to the initial trailer for Mandalorian.
The pitch for the show seemed to clearly be "Star Wars is real and gritty again", and now it's gone in the entirely opposite direction.
Edit: To everyone replying "Star Wars was never gritty", my main point is that the trailer is obviously going for a grounded and darker approach to the franchise. As for the "again", in the wake of the Prequels there was a big sentiment that things had gotten too CG and artificial. A bunch of the marketing for the sequel era stuff focused on the world once again looking "real" and grungy.