After a seven year hiatus from cinemas following Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, it is interesting to see how little hype there seems to be around this movie. Box office followers were certain a month ago that this newest movie would have one of the lowest launches in franchise history. Reports seem to confirm that trend. But box office discussion is as empty and bad faith as the dreaded Dead Game discourse, a meaningless way of discussing a work of art. More substantive are the review scores: 63% at time of writing is technically a pass on Rotten Tomatoes. However, I find critics have been curving the grade for years now to avoid audience backlash. A 63% is probably in reality less than 50%. The audience score at 89% means even the fandom army are not that excited to fight for this one. (Michael, for example, with its hardcore MJ stans, sits at 97%, and that movie has a much worse critic score.) It is hard to say any movie in 2026 will be able to build the kind of excitement that even mid-tier Marvel productions could pull just ten years ago, but The Baby Yoda Movie has gained this reputation online of being a movie nobody is that interested in. That's become the narrative.
Even I was pretty sure I would hate this, and I was there on Friday night, with a Baby Yoda doll in hand, a dapper Baby Yoda doll wearing a bow tie (see picture). I had people on both sides of me with Baby Yoda dolls. So on second thought, this is one of the only movies this year that feels worthy of being an event. 2026 has been a great year for movies so far, but nobody was making Mother Mary into a big family outting. And The Baby Yoda Movie on that scale feels big, big enough I'm bothering to review it. Even if a lot of the space online feels annoyed and frustrated that they have to deal with Star Wars again.
Luckily, if expectations are low, the ambitions met them. LucasFilm is not out here promoting a Rise of Skywalker or anything, no triumphant return to glory. The Baby Yoda Movie feels like the studio slowly tip-toeing back into theaters with the kinds of movies they wanted to make: small, annual events with low stakes about little corners of the greater Galaxy. The fate of the universe is not threatened. In fact, neither is the major duo listed in the Government Name of this movie. The Baby Yoda Movie is a big episode of the TV Show, The Mandalorian. That's it. It is not the series finale, it's not even a season finale, it is not the most important part of either one of these character's lives. You don't need to have seen any of the Star Wars from before to watch this. And if there's a Baby Yoda 2, don't worry about Baby Yoda 1.
This movie has all the gravitas and drama of Ant-Man 2, possibly the least interesting movie in the entire MCU. It is a couple of adventures on a few planets with a darling little puppet at its center fighting goons with his badass dad. And if you can except a movie that is only that, well... that might not be so bad.
