George Lucas named the old 1930s Saturday morning Western adventure serials as one of his main inspirations for the original 1977 Star Wars movie. The initial text crawl labeling it “Episode IV” and catching the audience up on an ongoing story were designed to evoke that same feeling of going to the theater to catch up on the adventures-in-progress of your favorite action hero. The world building and operatic sweep of Star Wars propelled the franchise to be far more, and the movies (especially the post-Lucas movies) left that initial inspiration behind.

Thankfully and gloriously The Mandalorian and Grogu brings Star Wars back to basics. The lone wolf, called The Mandalorian or “Mando” by most, is a gunslinger (excuse me, bounty hunter) who takes his cub, Grogu, on dangerous missions to go after bad guys (former officers of the Empire). The plan is always to capture them, but of course missions don’t always go to plan. The setup and adventure is very “low stakes” compared to prior films in which “the fate of the Galaxy” seemed to hang on every decision. This is an exciting localized adventure, which is a piece of a larger narrative but isn’t necessarily a milestone in it. There are very few main characters (and blissfully one of them is played by to perfection by Sigourney Weaver), and an easy to follow story that sets up and then gets out of the way of the daring-do. One criticism of the film is that it could have just been Season 4 of The Mandalorian, but I don’t think so. The movie is both more focused without the TV show subplots, and higher budget, with more filming on location than in a studio.

Of course it has all the elements you’d expect in a Star Wars movie. Amazing visuals. Sweeping vistas of far away worlds. Lots of Easter eggs for long-time fans (in fact Mando’s co-pilot, Zeb, is from the cartoon series Star Wars: Rebels). I should note that I enjoyed the score by Ludwig Gorensson, which veers from the traditional Star Wars soundtrack in its use of synthy and world music elements, but others I spoke to didn’t like it as much, so your mileage may vary.

Overall I’d heartily recommend this movie to anyone looking for a fun, tight, back-to-basics sci-fi adventure. It’s not “required viewing” to understand the Star Wars meta-saga but to me that’s a feature. Sometimes you just want a movie that invigorates you and leaves you smiling, and this is that movie.