The Mandalorian and Grogu is facing a lot of pressure to refuel the sputtering franchise. Ever since the disastrous conclusion of the sequel trilogy with 2019’s Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars has been relegated to pumping out TV shows for Disney's streaming platform. Now, the franchise is making a theatrical comeback with Jon Favreau's feature-length continuation of his popular Star Wars series The Mandalorian.

Ahead of the film's premiere on May 22, Disney invited a handful of journalists to watch the first 15 minutes of The Mandalorian and Grogu at IMAX headquarters in Los Angeles. Polygon was part of that group, making me one of the first people not employed by Lucasfilm to see anything beyond the trailers. While it was exciting to see Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, on the big screen, my first impression of the film is that it feels more like a Star Wars video game or a Netflix show than the blockbuster movie that's going to return Star Wars to its former glory.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the first 15 minutes of The Mandalorian and Grogu.]

The Mandalorian and Grogu doesn't begin with an opening crawl. Instead, we got a few sparse lines of text to set the scene and catch up any filmgoing audiences who never watched the Disney Plus show. (Although if you're not caught up on The Mandalorian, you're going to find this movie somewhat confusing.) In the aftermath of Return of the Jedi, the New Republic rebuilds in the ashes of the Empire. Meanwhile, our heroes hunt down surviving Imperial forces on the outskirts of the galaxy.

The story opens in one of those remaining Empire strongholds, where a mid-level crime boss is busy extorting his local syndicates. "I think we can all agree that things were better under the Empire," he says, before leading his unenthusiastic clients in a chant of, "Long live the Empire!"

A second later, the unnamed crime boss shares some........

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