Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

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As the table below shows, the Star Wars movie franchise that started in 1977 with the groundbreaking “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope” is the most lucrative franchise in the history of movies. This amazing science fiction idea has also created another 17 TV series and another five Star Wars Lego series.

The new Star wars film, the first in seven years “The Mandalorian and Grogu” stars Pedro Pascal as the Mandalorian and Grogu as baby Yoda. Grogu is such a cute character of Yoda that it has added more life to a series that is now, almost 50 years old and seems to be still going strong.

The problem with this new movie is the same as other movies like this one. “We do not care about creating a great story and screenplay first, we only care about creating great special effects and then retrofitting a story around the effects”. This movie is once again about name recognition and not about an entertaining story. This is a decision entirely based on making money and not entertaining the audience. I also found too much of these 2+ hours surprisingly boring, especially towards the end. One of the best reviews, says it all, Rachit Gupta “Even the franchise’s lesser entries have understood that without real stakes, there is no real story. The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first film in the history of this franchise to forget that entirely.”

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are an understandably low 63%, with my rating only 50% and a recommendation only for the most rabid Star Wars fans.

MovieYearCritics RatingWorldwide GrossEstimated Profit
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope197794%$775 million$350 million
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back198095%$549 million$220 million
Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi198383%$482 million$180 million
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace199951%$1.027 billion$450 million
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones200265%$653 million$250 million
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith200579%$868 million$400 million
Star Wars: The Clone Wars200818%$68 million$5 million
Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens201593%$2.07 billion$780 million
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story201684%$1.06 billion$320 million
Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi201791%$1.33 billion$420 million
Solo: A Star Wars Story201869%$393 million-$75 million
Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker201951%$1.07 billion$300 million
GRAND TOTAL$10.345 billionApproximately $3.6 billion



Movie Review: The Sheep Detectives

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One could easily say that the new movie “The Sheep Detectives” could be a movie for kids, with the talking, cute CGI sheep. However, there are scenes of someone being killed and a sheep being attacked by dogs and eventually killed in this movie, so for those reasons, I do not recommend this movie for children.

The Sheep Detectives stars Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson, with many known celebrities providing the voices of the sheep.
Regina Hall, Brett Goldstein, Bryan Cranston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patrick Stewart. After about 20 minutes, this movie turns into a whodunit crime story, with the talking sheep taking over the investigation after it is clear that the ineffective sheriff did not know what he was doing. I thought that the investigation and complex solution to the crime were well done, with some humor with the sheep, also well done.

I am surprised at the very high 97% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, with so many well-known actors agreeing to make this movie, which is only an above-average idea and screenplay. My rating is 80% with a mild recommendation.

Amazon Prime Movie Review: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War

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The latest installment of the Jack Ryan movie series on Amazon Prime, this time around, is a two-hour movie, not a series. It is a great example of producers trying to “squeeze as much money out of the rock” for a well-known name and franchise that I have ever seen.

The character of Jack Ryan started in 1990, starring Alec Baldwin in “The Hunt for Red October”, and spawned two very good movies movies, “Patriot Games” (1992) and “Clear and Present Danger (1994) starring Harrison Ford, “The Sum of All Fears” (2002) starring Ben Affleck, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014) and the current one, streaming now on Amazon Prime, “Jack Ryan Ghost War” (2026) starring John Krasinski. Krasinski also starred in 4 seasons of Jack Ryan in Prime in 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023.

This story grabs all that works in the previous Jack Ryan series, starting with the long-time close friendship between Jack Ryan, played by Krasinski, and James Greer, played by Wendell Pierce, where there are scenes of their affection and respect for one another and intense arguments, due to new revelations about cases they have worked on in the past. There are well-done scenes of massive gunfire, car chases, and shootouts inside buildings and cars blowing up. This movie also stars Sienna Miller, who plays an MI6 agent Emma Marlow, and Max Beesley as Liam Crown, who is the evil leader of a criminal organization.

The problem is that there is nothing new in this movie; we have seen it all before in the four Prime series and the previous five movies. In the rush to make more money in the Jack Ryan series, the realization was that name recognition would probably mean that less time would be necessary to write an interesting and innovative screenplay. People will probably want to stream this new movie because of the name “Jack Ryan”; there’s no need to take 18 months to write and then re-write a new screenplay. Let’s make money now.

This unfortunate, slap-together story and then rushing to production is the number one reason why this movie is getting such low marks on Rotten Tomatoes of 45%. I agree with this rating and do not recommend this movie. You are better off watching the older movies or the early Jack Ryan series.