“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” Presents Baby Yoda: The Motion Picture

Baby Yoda stands on sand and salutes you. Standing next to him are Din Djarin's shiny boots.

IT’S GROGIN’ TIME!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: We watch Star Wars movies and shows! My wife Anne and I have kept up with most of the Disney+ series, for better or worse. We aren’t unconditional superfans preaching, “If it says Star Wars on it, it’s A+++!” in a glassy-eyed haze, nor do we hate-watch it and share high-strung “cave-geek shakes impotent angry fist at toy line” harangues for hollow YouTube bucks while our souls decompose into gnarled, oily nubs.

The far-faraway galaxy is large; it contains multitudes. Granted, that’s more of a four-quadrant marketing design than a magnanimous diversity credo. Billion-dollar corporations don’t stay megalithic by catering exclusively to any singular faction. The universe that began with the classic Jedi lightsaber battles of your sacrosanct childhood memories — or your children’s, if you’ve passed down your pop-culture heritage to them! — also includes the protracted Clone Wars continuity, the politically charged Andor, the kiddie-cartoon-to-steely-drama evolution of Star Wars Rebels, the cosmopolitan artistic experiments of Star Wars Visions, the books and comics that can matter but usually don’t, in-story toyetic adverts, nostalgia-pandering, Morals of the Story, super awesome EXPLOSIONS, the aesthetic sins and redemptive apologia of Jar-Jar Binks, spaceships, Halloween masks, clothing lines, infrequent moments of This Is Cinema, and, yes, the character we knew for years as Baby Yoda till The Powers That Be eventually bothered to name him.

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