The Mandalorian, Season 3 (Disney+ Series)

★★★★★

Massive Spoilers

Directors: Rick Famuyiwa, Rachel Morrison, Lee Isaac Chung, Carl Weathers, Peter Ramsey, Bryce Dallas Howard

Writers: Jon Favreau, Noah Kloor, Dave Filoni, George Lucas

Reading how people are complaining about The Mandalorian Season 3’s final episode, their hearts must be frozen cold to be able to idly dismiss one of the greatest Star Wars battles ever put onscreen involving Mandalorians and Stormtroopers with jetpacks, or that they felt nothing when Bo Katan charges forward with the Darksaber in hand alongside the Armorer and dozens of Mandalorians behind them. Their souls must be made of rock if it mattered not to them that the three deadly Praetorians who dispatched Paz Vizsla last episode were hewing down IG12 with Grogu in it while the blast doors closed behind a wounded Din Djarin who could only watch in horror.

But my favorite moment of the episode wasn’t even any of these, or Bo Katan fighting a Beskar-ed Moff Gideon, or Din going full John Wick on a bunch of Stormtroopers with just a f***ing dagger, or even when Grogu saved Din and Bo with the Force while his emotionally soaring theme played in the background. No, the scene I loved the most, that got me all welled up, was during the initiation scene at the Living Waters of Mandalore, when Din finally, officially adopts Grogu as his son. The orphan who lost his family now becomes the father of another. It didn’t happen in this episode, but I’m looking forward to the upcoming one where he no longer calls Grogu “kid”, but “son”.

Stay bitter and aloof all you want. Feel proud of your refined cinematic palate that The Mandalorian somehow failed to appease. Pick the series apart for its plot holes, lack of logic, and cameos of people you detest to your heart’s content. But I will continue to enjoy the heck out of the 24 glorious episodes of the best, most faithful, exciting and heartwarming Star Wars show since the original trilogy, and more if we’re lucky. This IS Star Wars. This IS the way.

M3GAN

★★★★

Directed by Gerard Johnstone

Written by Akela Cooper and James Wan

Box up your toys and delete your AI apps, boys and girls, because if you’ve always been creeped out by life-like dolls and super-smart AI, this latest amalgamation of the two isn’t going to make things better! Allison Williams of Get Out fame plays Gemma, the creator of a sophisticated robot doll called M.3.G.A.N., whom she uses as a surrogate parent to her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) while she works overtime to keep her demanding boss David (Malaysian comedian Ronny Chieng!) from firing her. Stupidly, she forgot to put Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics into M3GAN’s programming, and the android begins to test its boundaries, and eventually crosses them.

Predictably, with robots-gone-berserk movies like this one, the robot does go berserk. And no, there are no Shyamalan-worthy twists here, sorry. But what’s not predictable though is the execution, which was way better than expected in terms of how it beautifully set up its premise and the relationships between the core characters, and that includes the robot itself. I respect that they took the effort to do this when everyone was just pre-judging this to be another shoddily put-together horror cash grab that is only all about the violent pay-offs. It’s really something that the movie could make me feel relieved when certain peripheral characters survived till the end of the film, because it made me care. They even managed to squeeze in a commentary about the use of devices and gadgets to babysit our children.

This certainly isn’t a reinvention of the wheel, but it gave it new treads and a sleek, shiny new hubcap, and I have to give credit where credit’s due. Williams, McGraw and Chieng were all great here, especially McGraw.

A lot of people would compare this with the Chucky/ Child’s Play films, but I think M3GAN has more similarities with the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell. You’ll know it when you see it.

Minions: The Rise of Gru

★★★

Picking up where we left off with the Minions and their newfound master Gru at the end of the last movie, The Rise of Gru shifts the focus back on the protagonist of the Despicable Me movies. Set in 1970s San Francisco, an 11-year-old Gru aspires to join the villainous Vicious 6 gang, but will his disaster-prone Minions help or hinder his goal?

I never thought that I would have anything interesting to say about this one, but this latest installment of the Despicable Me/ Minions films managed to surprise me on a couple of things. There are the many Chinese references, for example the Chinese zodiac, San Francisco Chinatown and the Chinese New Year parade held there, Michelle Yeoh’s brief appearance, and the iconic Bruce Lee yellow jumpsuit. There was also a joke on Kungfu Panda’s “inner peace”, and another one stolen from Shrek 2. Even a googly eyed rock made an appearance, very likely a nod to Yeoh’s most recent film. They should have opened this during the Chinese New Year celebration. It would have been on-theme and could have done particularly well in the Southeast Asian region.

The problem I have with this movie and its predecessor is that they both have this constant barrage of slapstick gags that became really tiresome to watch. There are no build-ups and pay-offs, just Minions punching each other, and yelling and shrieking throughout the entire runtime. The Rise of Gru is slightly better than its predecessor because at least the A-story is about him. The Minions have always worked better as comic reliefs in the Despicable Me movies, but what do I know? The first Minions movie made a billion freakin’ dollars in 2015!

Originally published on my Facebook page, here.