The Mandalorian and Grogu’s inability to make an impact at the box office has raised all sorts of questions. Is Star Wars no longer a tentpole franchise? What does its failure mean for franchise filmmaking as a whole? Why did all of Jeremy Allen White’s lines sound like they were recorded while he was half-asleep?
These are big questions, but we should have seen this debacle coming long before we started asking them. Sure, Star Wars has been overextending itself for years now, and the Mandalorian had become a character in search of a premise. But our analysis can go back much further, because 15 years ago, director Jon Favreau released a different space western with the same strengths and flaws.
