‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ LEGO Leaks, Potential New Trailer, and More

Happy Sunday, and welcome to a new edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away“. We’re a little over three months away from the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu, and still wondering where that final trailer is. More on that below. (But please, Lucasfilm, give us new footage… I’m tired of using the same header images over and over again!)

 

There wasn’t much news this week, but we were still back on our regular programming. We had a normal Thursday night SWNN Live! show on YouTube, and Josh was also on schedule with his Character Spotlight, this time on Fennec Shand!

 

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Three Things That May Have Flown Casual

 

• Publishing rumors: Did you hear about this supposed Marvel/Star Wars cross-over comic? Well, it ain’t real! But Nate had some thoughts in this piece from this week.
• Gaming updates: The big Star Wars reveal from PlayStation’s State of Play stream was a new Galactic Racer trailer. Does this mean the game will be out before Zero Company? Probably yes, and I’m starting to suspect that game will be pushed back to next year. We’ve had two trailers from Galactic Racer in two months, yet nothing on Zero Company in almost a year. On top of that, there’s new key art and small bits of information revealed alongside the trailer.
• Publishing updates: We have three tie-in books to The Mandalorian and Grogu, as well as Josh’s review of the one-shot Jar Jar comic. Jeez, it really was a slow week!

 

 

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The LEGO Leaks Are Back! And More From The Mandalorian and Grogu

 

To call the hype machine surrounding The Mandalorian and Grogu a far cry from the good ol’ days would certainly be a generous statement. Back in 2017 and the peak of the sequel era, everything was blown out of proportion. Every single planet name or new creature reveal, let alone the confirmation of a character returning, was the talk of the fandom for a week. Pictures of new LEGO sets were examined extensively, and everything was good enough ground for speculation.

 

This week, we got our first look at LEGO sets from The Mandalorian and Grogu, which confirmed that Carson Teva, played in the Disney Plus series by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, is coming back for the big-screen adventure. We also got our first look at the Black Series figures, and Funko Pops. And all of that felt like it came and went and it didn’t really stick with us. Just like this movie in general.

 

It’s pretty clear to all of us now, I think, that the big challenge for Disney and Lucasfilm when marketing this movie is to make it feel like more than just an episode of television. But… What if it’s not? Jon Favreau recently spoke about this, saying the following:

 

“Okay, we presented a cinematic experience on the small screen. We have to up our game now to the movie theater. That means taller aspect ratios for IMAX, building sets that take full advantage of that, making the visual effects of the quality and caliber that we have to notch everything up. And then the storytelling as well.”

 

 

Notice how the storytelling came in last. Favreau wanted to make this feel much bigger and greater, on a visual scale. That’s inherent to the medium, I would argue, even if the big screen still requires that you scale everything up. But the real challenge here, especially for Favreau, is how to make this feel as something more than an episode of TV. For that, the stakes need to be higher — yet we’ve already had pretty high stakes in the TV show already, so it’s not like that’s gonna cut it alone.

 

There need to be some major character moments as well, which Favreau also discussed:

 

“Grogu has leveled up a bit. We saw that he trained with Luke, and time has passed. So he’s got a little of the Jedi influence. And then he’s also an apprentice Mandalorian. So now it’s time for dad to bring him on adventures. And pretty soon there will be a few more clues out there in the world.”

 

That’s important of course. The final judgement will come once we see the movie, of course. But I do get a similar feeling from Favreau’s quotes to when he was promoting a new season of the show, and I fear this will just become a “been here, done that” kind of thing. We know that at a corporate level the movie was made because Kathleen Kennedy needed a movie out fast and Season 4 of The Mandalorian was the best thing they had. But did Favreau find a story-driven reason to move on from the small to the big screen?

 

 

For now, they are keeping some secrets, and revealing others — case in point: the Razor Crest is back! “There’s some stuff that people may have gotten clues to. He’s in a Razor Crest now, which is the ship that he originally had. He’s in the same model of ship,” Favreau said. The LEGO sets also revealed the same thing. Now, for this, there must be a good reason. After all, they already sold some toys with this model during Season 1 and Season 2, so it’s not like it was justified on that level… I think?

 

Next Sunday we’ll be three months away from the release. The Hollywood Reporter is hearing that a trailer is supposed to be out “very soon”, and as I mentioned last week, I certainly see one playing before Hoppers in March. But Toy Story 5 will also have a trailer before that, so I wonder if the Mandalorian and Grogu one will come out even before then. There’s still plenty of time to get people excited. But this is starting to feel like a Solo situation all over again: a new Star Wars movie coming out in May that just can’t break through because it’s fighting an uphill battle started by its own franchise (in this case, the dilution of the brand with so many Disney Plus series) and also because of so much other competition. Hope it performs a little better this time around.

 

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What did you think of the latest edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away”? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down below in the comment section. You can also send them, or reach out with any information tips, directly via our Contact page.

 

Have a great week!