I was going to save this for the end of Q&A, but it's Memorial Day weekend and a lot of you are Americans with time to kill. It's absolutely worth noting that Disney has decided to pander to those of you who love alien monsters and weird droids. Also strange music and small green people eating things. My opinion might shift, but as of right now this is my favorite of the six Disney theatrical movies - it's a pity Rotten Tomatoes' critics dislike it.

The Mandalorian and Grogu was great. If you didn't go see it, you missed out and should probably stop reading. I assume those of you who are immune to being pandered to and/or Grogu won't like it, but they went out of their way to put stuff on the screen that was awesome to look at. The craftsmanship was excellent.

Here in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, there are a lot of theaters. According to Disney-era tradition I found the least popular/closest/cheapest one and saw it Thursday night, in a largely empty auditorium. You fanatics for fancy screens and sounds can pay twice as much if you want, I got in for $12.50 and didn't have to pay in advance or their stupid "convenience fees" yet again. I consider this yet another massive victory - I even got to skip most of the ads and trailers.

As to the movie itself? Pure pandering to a specific kind of fan who is me. If you didn't see the movie, too bad, because you missed what seemed to be Phil Tippet's handiwork on some jerky stop-motion droids, multiple hutts, a whole monster fight scene, new ships, old ships, familiar Rebel pilots, and arguably 60-70% of a Disney+ TV show season with a bigger budget and better effects. It was pretty dang violent for a PG-13 movie, and if history is any indication I assume the secondary market prices on INT-4 Mini-Rigs are about to go up. Or, you can just go 3D print one now, I guess.

I know some people have disparaged the film as being mostly puppets, but let's be honest - that's what we want. It's like someone saw Return of the Jedi and adjusted the "monster" sliders all the way over to the top and the "melodrama" sliders to the middle. There were very few wholly original concepts or characters - a lot of it came in from previous TV shows and I even saw a few screens that looked inspired by Atari's original vector graphics coin-op arcade game. The story is par for the course these days, but the craftsmanship and attention to detail is more what I like about a lot of these films. Their effects houses and creature shops put so much work in and it's clear they wanted you to notice and appreciate it. And I did!

With any luck Hasbro, LEGO, and the rest will have a big post-release plan over the next year and I sincerely hope they consider some The Retro Collection stuff too. (C'mon, give us a Razor Crest and Zeb and Rotta and some X-Wings and pilots.)

I left The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and Solo having had a great time. The Last Jedi left me thinking I'd need to see the next one to know if I liked it or not, but the commentary track and rewatches nudged me to really digging most of it. (Not so much the creatures and costumes, but the story I liked.) The Rise of Skywalker I saw once. Maybe I'll see it again for its 10th anniversary - and maybe it's the lack of toys but I feel no current desire to ever sit through it again.

"TMAG" is probably going to be something I watch over and over just to pause and look at all the stuff. I don't think it had the most humanoid aliens, but the amount of big monsters and creatures makes this the new champ in that category. I scoff at the rest. I'm hoping for a sequel or another season of the show - this was a great example of what it is. If what you wanted was a guy with a red lightsaber stabbing people, I'm sure more of that is coming. I'll probably go see The Mandalorian and Grogu again in theaters.