Spoilers below for parts of The Mandalorian and Grogu, so be warned if you haven’t yet watched the 2026 movie release.
Despite a certain amount of doubt in Disney’s decision-making skills for its Star Wars content, The Mandalorian and Grogu surpassed expectations to dominate the box office in its opening weekend, and with a story that feels as timeless to me as any franchise entries since the original trilogy. Not only did it largely avoid needless fan-service connections and twists, but it was also exciting, funny, and filled with adorable Grogu moments, natch.
What I wasn’t expecting at all, however, was for a nerve-jangling Mandalorian and Grogu action sequence to make me want to writhe my way out of the theater, while also being one of the coolest action sequences in the entire franchise. I mean, who could possibly expect such a dichotomy being spurred by a Star Wars movie? Discussion cannon: armed and firing…
Star Wars Action Doesn't Get Much Bigger Or Better Than That Mountainside Battle With The AT-ATs
As someone who's loved this George Lucas-crafted franchise since childhood, while being a fandom-centrist in general, I had a capped-level of excitement for Jon Favreau's first Star Wars movie. Like many, I think The Mandalorian Season 1 is a high point whose next two outings provided diminishing returns, but I figured Disney wouldn't take yet another high-budget swing without a Hutt-family-reunion-sized confidence in his and Dave Filoni's storytelling skills. The IMAX of it all didn't hurt, either.
So I wasn't necessarily surprised that The Mandalorian and Grogu kicks off with a huge action sequence, but I was taken aback by just how great and effective the whole shebang is, especially once the AT-ATs come into it. The scale is so grand that the rest of the movie can't quite match up, which is fine, since the mountain-set battle counts among the best Star Wars action scenes of all time. Is it the best of the entire modern era? I'll allow for some recency bias here.
One big reason this explosive scene easily stands out to my brain is because it utilizes the vertical scale in a way that this franchise usually doesn't. Nearly all of Star Wars' most memorable scenes play out either on a flat, horizontal axis (Endor landspeeders, lightsaber fights, podracing, etc.) or in free space (X-Wing battles, the Battle of Scarif, etc.). Luke's dramatic fall down the shaft on Cloud City is an exception, but certainly doesn't match up.
For Mandalorian and Grogu, Jon Favreau wisely set the AT-AT conflict on a relatively thin strip of mountain pathway, without the room for the giant mechs to maneuver sideways. (Not quite sure how they got out there in the first place.) Obviously Mando and Grogu fly horizontally from one to the next, but it's the up-and-down scale that blew me away, with the human characters looking so miniscule compared to the vehicles that it hurt my head to think about how tall they actually were, which is where the anxiety clawed in.
As Much As I Love It, The Sequence Made Me Legitimately Squirm With Anxiety
One of my lesser-explored brain tics can get stirred up when objects of drastically different sizes share the same space, to the point where just the scale alone feels dangerous in some way. It's somewhat akin to the idea of getting stuck atop the highest hill of a roller coaster, or looking inside a skyscraper that's completely hollowed out. It's not always so much about height as it is about vastness, but the AT-ATs themselves were enough to immediately send my mind reeling, since they are essentially walking high-rises.
Thinking about climbing one of them out there on that mountain is enough to make me stay inside my home office until the next ice age. Which goes double when I imagine flying around those giant bastards. It's just hard enough to comprehend that panic creeps in.
But my gawd, it's when the AT-ATs are falling that I was the most awash with unease, mainly due to how long it takes, given how honking big they are. Imagining myself as one of the people inside the "head," knowing that death is imminent but not here just yet, that's pure dread to me.
As well, I don't mean to trivialize any real-world tragedies, but watching that one AT-AT falling over the edge of the mountain and down into the rocky abyss tapped into the same "this can't be happening" sense as seeing buildings and cities destroyed by natural disasters and/or warfare. If I would have been vacationing on that planet in a cabin on the opposite side of the mountains from the battle, and saw the AT-AT fall, I'd never stop freaking out about it.
But that's just me and my neurotic brainy-poo. Thankfully, or not, everything else in The Mandalorian and Grogu was scaled so that my anxiety levels could once again level out, and I could enjoy Babu Frik's arrival in full, baby.
