Grogu brings the cute to the new Star Wars film, which is unfortunately lacking in other areas. —Courtesy of DisneyThe Mandalorian and Grogu opens with a man dressed in the crisp Imperial uniform giving a speech from the head of a conference table. For Star Wars fans who have gathered in theaters to see this big-screen blow-up of the franchise’s first live-action television show, it's hard not to think of another Star Wars TV series. Some of the most electrifying scenes in Andor took place in similar Imperial meeting rooms, British actors coolly discussing propaganda, espionage, and personal grievances. That's not what's happening in The Mandalorian and Grogu, though. The former Imperial warlord gives a brief, entertaining-but-perfunctory speech in which he raises the tribute his vassals owe him, then runs away because Mando's coming to get him. There's no time for gripping dialogue—he's got to get into an AT-AT for an action set piece. It's a telling start to Star Wars' first movie in seven years. These opening minutes reveal which Star Wars TV show is going to be the future of the franchise, and Baby Yoda has bested Andor. Unfortunately, this is the way.And it was always going to be this way—at least, to some extent. Andor, a TV prequel to Rogue One (itself a theatrical prequel to A New Hope), is the most mature title Star Wars has ever released. The Tony Gilroy series was an intelligent, serious, and gripping exploration of fascism, the nature of resistance, and sadly evergreen topics like genocide. Yet for as rewarding as "Star Wars for grown-ups" was, the franchise couldn't be for grown-ups when it returned to the big screen for the first time since 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. Adult fans sometimes forget, but Star Wars is for kids as much (if not more) as it is for them—not just philosophically, but economically. The Mandalorian and Grogu, an extension of a much more adventure-focused series that has plenty of connections to Star Wars cartoon series and the highly marketable character informally known as "Baby Yoda," is the stuff four-quadrant summer tentpoles are made of. There are other reasons why it's naive to think that the decision to go with Mandalorian rather than Andor vibes for Star Wars' return to movies is a simple, binary choice. Andor already did get a movie, though it preceded the series, and 2016's Rogue One managed to be one of the more mature Star Wars films while still being a blockbuster. (The movie grossed over $1 billion globally.) The Disney+ series was a unicorn that could only have been made at exactly the time it was greenlit, back when streaming was a Wild West and it seemed like it made business sense to spend $650 million on two seasons of a Star Wars prequel show with an inherently niche audience. Setting aside whether or not Andor was technically profitable, the money was well spent. Critics loved it, and although Season 1 started with underwhelming viewership, the complete show has gone on to be the most streamed Star Wars title on Disney+, according to Nielsen. It's also the most streamed Star Wars title among Millennials and Gen X. A masked Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver —Courtesy of DisneyAmong Boomers and Gen Alpha, it was The Mandalorian that took the top spot. Gen Z favored the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which was created by Dave Filoni, the new head of LucasFilm whose fingerprints and style of Star Wars storytelling are all over The Mandalorian. Young people—the ostensible future of the franchise—like Mando and Baby Yoda. It makes sense those two would be the ones to get a call up to the big leagues. And if the movie can cost just $165 million—a bargain for a special effects-driven blockbuster even if you can kind of tell expenses were spared with the CGI? Even better. As easy as it would be to frame The Mandalorian versus Andor as a simple choice in which the pickers picked wrong, the future of a multi-billion-dollar franchise is never simple. But even if this is the TV show that Star Wars is pinning its feature-length hopes on, we can still wish for a better result. It's become fashionable among a certain sect of cynical Star Wars fans to hate on The Mandalorian. While initially praised for its adventure-of-the-week storytelling, a gradual shift over the seasons to lore-rich plotting that gets bogged down continuing plot threads from the animated series have tarnished The Mandalorian's reputation, which once shone like Beskar steel. (The episode of Mandalorian that was inexplicably in the middle of the dreadful Book of Boba Fett miniseries didn't help.) Though it’s gone downhill, the first season remains an exciting romp and it seems like no amount of over-exposure or crass merchandising can take away from Grogu's cute appeal. Watching him and a mostly unseen Pedro Pascal have their biggest adventure yet on the biggest IMAX screens might never have been the transcendent experience of Andor. But it could still have made for a good movie. The biggest problem with The Mandalorian and Grogu isn't that it doesn’t reach the sophistication of Andor, but that it doesn't feel like a movie at all. The action in The Mandalorian and Grogu is merely serviceable, the special effects would be impressive for TV but not so for the big screen, and with the exception of Sigourney Weaver and a masked Pascal, it doesn't boast a "movie star" cast. Instead, it's over two hours of a cute puppet who can't talk, an expressionless helmet, and a computer-generated slug. Rotta the Hutt —Courtesy of DisneyThe film follows the titular duo after they dispatch that Imperial warlord in the opening sequence and then get their next assignment—a very episodic structure that only gets more so. To find the next warlord, they first need to rescue Rotta the Hutt, the late Jabba's buff-as-hell son who made his debut in another poorly received Star Wars movie with TV show connections. (The 2008 animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars served as the pilot to the TV show of the same name.) This level of stakes is all well and good for a season of a TV show; it's not quite special enough for a movie, especially if it's not perfectly executed on a technical level. It may have been the beginning of the end for The Mandalorian when Luke Skywalker showed up in the Season 2 finale, but that felt like a momentous, important event in the Star Wars universe. In contrast, nothing has really changed by the end of The Mandalorian and Grogu. For a franchise that seems to want every property to be required viewing in order to keep up with the storyline, there are shockingly few connections to the larger Star Wars lore. With the exception of a resolution to Rotta the Hutt's story that somebody must have been clamoring for, the status quo of the Star Wars universe hasn't been notably altered in any way. Maybe a disposable adventure could have worked with stunning visual achievements—it's much easier to forgive a weak story if you're blown away by the action of the effects—but that's not the case with this film. It's not a super-sized finale to The Mandalorian nor is it even a "very special episode." It's just… an episode. In a movie theater.Star Wars needed to return to theaters. This franchise changed cinema forever when it premiered on the big screen, and it should have a home in theaters. The Mandalorian and Grogu is a disappointing, potentially even ominous return. The first Star Wars movie in seven years marks the first time that a Star Wars movie doesn't feel like an event, just more of the same. Andor was different. Andor felt like an event. If the franchise needed to turn to television to jump back to the movies, there was another way. Alas, the Mandalorian creed—and Disney—weren't that flexible.