Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | May 25, 2026
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu opened in theatres this past weekend. It’s the first new Star Wars movie we’ve had in cinemas since The Rise of Skywalker, although fans have not been short of new stories on Disney+. While the film, starring Pedro Pascal and a puppet Baby Yoda, opened with a $100 million-plus debut at the North American box office, it also claimed a franchise record it probably did not desire: it’s the lowest-grossing opening weekend for a Star Wars movie in the Disney era.
One shouldn’t rely exclusively on anecdotal evidence to explain this stumble, but I do think it’s worth noting how nobody in my life seemed excited for The Mandalorian and Grogu. Yeah, many of them watched the TV show and liked it. They’re Team Pedro all the way. They love Baby Yoda. But they all just shrugged to me and said they might watch it but it wasn’t a priority, especially in the opening weekend. What a contrast from the old days of Star Wars, where the premiere of new installments were treated like national holidays.
It used to be exciting to see a new Star Wars film in theatres. It was a rare occurrence and part of a grand story people had been committed to for a long time. Indeed, it was Star Wars that helped to invent that kind of fandom for a franchise. When the first one opened in theatres in 1977, it was a bona fide phenomenon that changed how films were made. People queued for hours outside the cinema to get a chance to see it. I remember seeing the original trilogy as a kid when they were re-released in the ’90s and being truly blown away by this tale. Hell, I remember my excitement when the first trailer for The Force Awakens dropped, reigniting that gleeful memory from my youth. A lot of us felt that. Nowadays? Maybe not so much.
As always, it’s worth remembering that talking about Star Wars fandom is a perilous thing because, as time has shown us over and over again, nobody hates Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans. I remember the ‘George Lucas raped my childhood’ t-shirts people wore after the prequels were released! The Disney era didn’t make things any better, as Kelly Marie Tran and John Boyega can attest to. This is a fandom forever dominated by a crushing brand of restorative nostalgia that forever years for the ‘good old days’ that probably never happened. Disney’s sweaty rush to appease the loud minority of online voices that thought The Last Jedi was akin to treason did not pay off. The over-stretched exercise in pandering that was The Rise of Skywalker left nobody feeling satisfied.
Still, it did feel like a lot of casuals (who make up the vast majority of ticket-buying Star Wars viewers) began to feel weary of the franchise for the same reasons the die-hards did. Disney would make grand announcements of future films, to be directed by big-name filmmakers and TV talents, then they’d be stuck in pre-production limbo for years until it was quietly announced that they’d been cancelled. Remember when Taika Waititi was going to make one? How about Patty Jenkins? Or the Game of Thrones guys? Some of these projects sounded promising, like Jenkins’s Top Gun-esque starfighter action-drama, and yet Disney seemed unable to make any of them happen.
They grew timid at the prospect of taking on any story in the universe that didn’t directly connect to the Skywalkers. The Last Jedi set up a refreshing shift in worldview wherein one could let go of the past and carve out a bright future of hope among the young future rebels of the galaxy. Then The Rise of Skywalker flinched and decided that only characters born from one bloodline could be special (Palpatine bones down, kids. Ick.) The proud incuriosity of this inward gaze, driven by a fear of narrative progress, made the franchise smaller. For all of its investments and grand ambitions, it felt like Disney couldn’t move beyond the tiniest percentage of Lucas’s universe.
On TV, things were a little better, but the problems persisted. The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi were bland re-treads that failed to take off. The Acolyte showed greater promise with its narrative but Disney killed it off after one season. The Mandalorian started off so strong but began to feel like a retread in later seasons (and it’s not even Pedro in the suit for most of it, by his own admission!) The exception to this all is Andor, which feels even more like lightning in a bottle with each passing year. Here was what we wanted more of from the Disney era of Star Wars. This was a genuine risk that paid off marvellously, a serious political drama with a lot to say about the mechanics behind the rise of fascism.
Crucially, it was confident in its storytelling and its ability to be far more than its basic set-up as yet another addition to a growing franchise. Showrunner Tony Gilroy and his cast believed in the material and made it sing. It didn’t need to use the movies as a crutch, or the same handful of characters to make people care, but it did connect to the series’ overall message of rebellion and refusing to accept a crooked norm. This was how Star Wars could always be, right? But it’s also an approach that is utterly devoid of nostalgia, unconcerned with selling toys or setting up several spin-offs that will go on for decades. Disney didn’t buy Star Wars for their health: they bought it for its money-making abilities off-screen. Audiences may have preferred the lack of pressure that accompanied Andor — you didn’t have to watch dozens of hours of homework beforehand to get it - but Disney wants your lifetime commitment.
Nostalgia is a potent concept but it’s one with a built-in shelf life. Every generation needs its own art and culture to one day be nostalgic about. Making them endlessly recycle one era’s favourite thing without a hint of growth will leave audiences feeling weary, or even insulted. Maybe it’s good that Star Wars isn’t a thing Gen Z-ers care all that much about. Wouldn’t it be depressing as all hell if they had to be beholden to the unchanging, rose-tinted drama of one family of Jedi that’s been around longer than their parents have been alive? But it’s all bad news for Disney, which has trapped itself in a narrow worldview of what a Star Wars project should be.
And we’re tired. The endless expanded universe franchise model of entertainment is a commitment, one that’s grown far less satisfying with each passing year. It took way longer for Marvel fatigue to hit than we expected it to but it still hit. Every studio that tried to replicate that model failed. It seems that audiences are less concerned with keeping up with years’ worth of canon just to enjoy one movie. The DC universe has greatly benefitted from a reboot that seems to prioritize good old-fashioned fun over reheating Marvel’s nachos. While remakes, reboots, and IPs are still box office dominant, younger audiences are also finding their own things to be excited about. Do you know how big Backrooms is going to be? I don’t think A24 does.
It’d be foolish to claim that Star Wars was better in ye olden days because that’s the trap fans always fall into, but the Disney era was meant to be more interesting and on a grander scale than it has been. The corporate giant seems utterly petrified of its own purchase and it’s going to do more damage to the franchise than simply taking a stand. Baby Yoda can only carry them so far, and the rose-tinted glasses always fall off eventually.
