“The Mandalorian and Grogu” New Trailer: Pedro Pascal Saddles Up for a Showdown with Rotta the Hutt in Jon Favreau & Dave Filoni’s Big-Screen Star Wars Western Epic with Sigourney Weaver
🎥 Jon Favreau & Dave Filoni bring their hit series to the big screen as Pedro Pascal’s Mando and his Force-sensitive sidekick track scattered Imperial warlords and confront a rising Hutt heir.
For most Star Wars aficionados, Boba Fett was the first Mandalorian bounty hunter we ever laid eyes on. He was an instant hit with fans; part of it was the sleek armor and awesome looking headgear, sure, but just as much was the mystique surrounding the character itself. Was he evil? Was he a hero? Did he follow a code, or break it every chance he got?
In a lot of ways, the character endured because we, the fans, filled in the blanks ourselves, projecting our own ideas onto that silent figure in the helmet. For those of us who were young and armed with wild imaginations, we likely constructed entire backstories for him, inventing his associations and alliances. Maybe he worked for Jabba the Hutt and the Empire out of pure self-interest... or maybe he was simply biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike and reveal himself as an unlikely savior of the Rebellion.
So just imagine the utter disappointment when we watched Boba Fett tumble into the Sarlacc Pit, seemingly swallowed alive at the start of Return of the Jedi. Reduced to what felt like a visual punchline during Han, Luke, Chewie, and Lando’s escape. Sure, it made for a thrilling action beat. But it also felt like a missed opportunity; a character wrapped in mystery and menace, only to be tossed aside before he ever had the chance to become fully fleshed out.
Well, 36 years later, fans finally got to see an entire mythos built around a Mandalorian bounty hunter in the Disney+ streaming series The Mandalorian. Okay, it wasn’t Boba Fett; despite George Lucas’s attempt to retroactively elevate him into the genetic template for an entire clone army in the prequel films. And to be fair, it was pretty awesome to witness Boba Fett’s origins unfold on screen, to see how a silent background enigma became the unaltered son of Jango Fett, carrying the weight of a legacy of sorts. But honestly, that wasn’t why the character resonated with us in the first place. We loved the mystery. The mystique.
After all, Boba Fett was originally modeled after Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name from Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. And The Mandalorian tapped right back into those roots, reminding fans that Star Wars has always had a simpler foundation; one built on classic Western iconography fused with Japanese samurai cinema. A lone gunslinger (with a blaster). A strict code. A dusty frontier landscape (perhaps with multiple suns and moons) where morality lives in shades of gray. A space western where the bad guys get what they deserve… but it takes a morally complicated figure (perhaps one adorned in beskar armor) to get the job done. And it certainly doesn’t hurt if the sidekick in this planet-hopping adventure happens to look like a baby Yoda.
So, after three seasons of The Mandalorian, creators Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni are finally taking the beskar-clad bounty hunter and his little green foundling to the big screen for what looks like an epic adventure across the galaxy.
Bad guys who need taking down? Check.
Crazy-looking aliens with weird voices? Check.
Epic blaster fights with stormtroopers? Absolutely.
Spaceships jumping to hyperspace in the nick of time? You know it.
The iconic Sigourney Weaver stepping into yet another sci-fi space franchise? Oh, that’s a check we’re more than happy to mark down.
And even the appearances of Jabba the Hutt’s relatives, including Jabba’s son? Check and double check.
The Mandalorian and Grogu appears to be a theatrical expansion determined to keep things pulpy, playful, and proudly old-school, as this branch of the Star Wars universe leans straight into its space-western motifs of gunslingers for hire, alien crime lords running amok, and a lawless galaxy where survival depends on who’s faster on the draw.
Pedro Pascal returns as Din Djarin aka “Mando”, hired to hunt down scattered Imperial warlords in the years following Return of the Jedi. The Empire may have fallen, but the galaxy is still very much a Wild West of syndicates and power vacuums. Mando also carries another mission, a personal one, as he intends to train his young Force-sensitive foundling, Grogu, to fend for himself and survive in a world where the future is uncertain.
Sigourney Weaver plays Ward, a former Rebel pilot who’s now risen to the rank of New Republic colonel. She’s the one issuing a wanted list of known war criminals and gangsters who still cling to the remnants of the Empire. She’s determined to snuff out whatever’s left of its shadow before it can rise again.
“This isn’t about revenge,” she proclaims in the new full-length trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu. “It’s about preventing another war.”
Weaver’s Ward makes her position crystal clear. This isn’t a personal vendetta; it’s preemptive justice. And that distinction becomes even sharper after Mando coolly assures her he can “take down every bad guy in your deck of cards.”
Well, among those “bad guys in the deck” is apparently the Hutt family, including Rotta the Hutt, Jabba’s heir to the criminal throne. He’s a massive, powerful slug who likely inherited more than just the family name. And if he’s anything like his late father, he won’t be going down without a fight. Which means this won’t be a simple bounty for Mando. Even the mere mention of Rotta the Hutt’s name is enough to make locals quake in their boots and keep their lips sealed.
Jeremy Allen White, of The Bear fame, and fresh off playing The Boss in the Bruce Springsteen biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, has the distinct pleasure (and challenge) of bringing Rotta the Hutt to life through motion capture.
But Jeremy Allen White isn’t the only peculiar bit of casting here. A keen ear might’ve picked up something unexpected in the new trailer: the unmistakable voice of Oscar-winning filmmaker Martin Scorsese as a four-armed Ardennian food truck owner who immediately closes up shop the second Mando starts asking questions about a Hutt.
In his first directed feature since 2019’s The Lion King, Favreau mans the helm, working from a script he co-wrote with Filoni, who now appears next in line to step into the role of president and chief creative officer of Lucasfilm following the recent announcement of Kathleen Kennedy’s departure.
The studio is quietly hoping this new feature can reignite the kind of theatrical magic Star Wars hasn’t truly seen since The Force Awakens.
The question is whether audiences are more eager for Favreau’s swashbuckling, back-to-basics space opera... or if the franchise’s big-screen mystique has dimmed a bit in the years since. Hard to say.
The Mandalorian and Groguis scheduled to open in theaters everywhere on May 22nd. This is the way... back to the big screen!
