A week before CinemaCon, I was invited by Disney to Los Angeles to screen eighteen minutes of Lucasfilm’s upcoming Star Wars movie The Mandalorian and Grogu. According to director Jon Favreau, who made the introductions at the IMAX Headquarters, we were the first to see this footage. He seemed as eager to share as we were to receive. The lights dimmed and we were treated to the movie’s opening fifteen minutes, plus the trailer with some beefed-up action sequences to tease the scale to come in the theatrical spin-off of the popular Disney+ series.

As this is the same footage screened at CinemaCon, I’ll skip a full blow-by-blow breakdown, which I’m sure will be readily available across the internet, and stick to impressions. How did this footage make me feel? What message was Favreau and Disney trying to impart to the audience as we near the first Star Wars film in seven years? Thinking back to a similar instance for Rogue One, when Lucasfilm screened about 30 minutes of the movie, I recall walking out and thinking, “This isn’t your standard Star Wars fare” after seeing Cassian shoot down a fellow Rebel to escape capture. When the lights came up on The Mandalorian and Grogu preview, I felt like I had been wrapped in a comfortable familiar blanket. It was the Mandalorian series, but bigger and bolder. It was Star Wars, like the good old days when they drop you into an adventure as it’s happening.

The opening crawl – it’s not so much a crawl as a few paragraphs that emerge onto the screen – sets up the major stakeholders. There are all caps for the key players. The NEW REPUBLIC is in its early stages after defeating the Empire. IMPERIAL WARLORDS are creating trouble for the fledgling government. The MANDALORIAN Din Djarin is working for the New Republic to bring down these troublesome factions. The opening text cuts to one warlord on a snowy planet declaring the “long live the Empire” before demanding higher tributes from local leaders. The warlord’s disdain for the locals, who cry that the shipping lanes are more treacherous than ever, drips from his every word as he declares the success of his safety protocols just as intruder alerts blare through the base.

The Mandalorian has come for this warlord, who asks his tributaries and his pilots to lay down cover fire for him to escape. The sequence involves Din Djarin and Grogu taking on base security before pursuing the warlord in his escaping AT-ATs. It is a nice sequence to remind everyone of where the Mandalorian and his ward Grogu stand. While Grogu wields the Force, he is still very much a child in Din’s eyes, and accordingly in need of protecting. But that doesn’t mean Din doesn’t take some chances… including making sure to get his mark. With the warlord’s escape vessel blown to smithereens, Din and Grogu rendezvous with a U-wing piloted by Zeb Orrelios, a key character from Star Wars Rebels who made his way to The Mandalorian Season 3.

Back at the New Republic base, Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver) is not too happy that Din killed his mark, because the New Republic is desperate for information on the looming Imperial threat. Although it’s apparent she sees Grogu as a child who needs to rein in his impulse control, she plays Din similarly, offering him a restored version of the Razor Crest, his beloved ship destroyed in Season 2 of The Mandalorian. The ship is payment on the current mission, plus one to come. One Din is reluctant to take as it involves a trip to Nal Hutta and the gangster Hutt Twins, who are looking for Jabba’s son Rotta (Jeremy Allen White). Interestingly enough, Din and Grogu depart on the Razor Crest 2.0 with Zeb in tow, leaving the impression that Din is expanding his circle of trust. Zeb’s backstory makes him a perfect foil to characters like Din and Grogu, as they’ve all experienced immense loss. I feel this is one of the storytelling choices that likely came from co-writer Dave Filoni.

After the screening, we had a chance to visit a warehouse full of set pieces, props, and puppets from the movie and the television shows touched by Jon Favreau, including The Mandalorian series, Skeleton Crew, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka. Favreau stopped by and talked about sharing these incredible treasures with us. At one point, he noted that he was a GenX fan, and I looked around to realize I was probably the only other person among the invitees hailing from that generation, as well. I think that’s a good sign for the franchise, that it has been accepted with loving arms beyond those who lived in a time when there wasn’t Star Wars.

Favreau voiced two goals: to reward people who have been there since the beginning, but to also keep aiming to make Star Wars for people who don’t know anything. His intention was to “outstretch a hand to the next generation [of fans].” Favreau believes that younger generations are discovering what GenX experienced with Star Wars in 1977: that people need community and good stories give people a reason to find community in a packed theater. Taking The Mandalorian to the theaters gives him an opportunity to “pull off the TV guardrails” and expand the scope of the set pieces and action sequences. You can see that in how fleshed out Delphi Base is and in the opening action sequence to take down the first warlord. It’s no secret that Favreau was in the first batch of directors that pitched themselves during the director hunt of the initial Disney era. He’s finally making his Star Wars movie and that emotion was palpable as he spoke. “When we’re having fun,” he said, “it tends to be contagious [for the audience].”

I’ll have more to come on our visit to Jon Favreau’s vault of Star Wars treasures upcoming on the podcast and on our socials.

Tickets for The Mandalorian and Grogu go on sale tomorrow. Check out the Final Trailer below!