The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: May 31, 2026
Endorsed by both Trapper Wolf & Jib Dodger
Hello there
Good evening and welcome back to the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. We’ll call this one a Sunday evening nightcap, the perfect way to end your weekend before the hellscape of Monday morning and the work week comes calling. This week I’ve got plenty of rambling thoughts about The Mandalorian and Grogu. And trust me, they are all over the place.
As always, thanks for reading Death Star HR. If you’re reading this and you’re not a subscriber, I’d love it if you entered your email below and smashed that subscribe button. There’s also an official Death Star HR Instagram and an official Death Star HR YouTube page as well and I’d love it if you subscribed there as well.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
It’s probably worth noting that The Mandalorian wouldn’t have been a hit without Baby Yoda and his cuteness. If Mando opened the pram and revealed, I don’t know, a baby Yuzzem or baby Jawa, there’s no way the series would have kept going.
I think talking to someone who had never seen Yoda until after they’ve seen Grogu would be an interesting conversation.
And speaking of Yoda…
Who can say that Yoda and Grogu AREN’T space beavers?
From the Desk of the “Editor”
So as you have probably noticed lately, Death Star HR hasn’t been hitting your inbox around on Friday around 6:00 am Central Time like it used to. The first couple years of Death Star HR, it was a regular event. Now, it’s a lot more hit or miss. There’s a variety of reasons for this, none of them are that interesting. But the long and short of it is some things have changed and there are more demands on my time during the week than there were when I first started in 2023. So, in an effort to get back on some kind of regular schedule, I’m changing the publishing date to Sunday. I’m hoping with the weekend, it will allow me to get back on target.
The Mandalorian and Grogu - One Week Later
[Bare Naked Ladies voice] It’s been one week since Space Dad and his little green son hit the big screen and changed our lives for the better. If you haven’t done so yet, you can read my spoiler-free adventures from seeing it on May 22nd.
OK last week was the spoiler-free review and thoughts of The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s been a week. There honestly isn’t a lot that can be spoiled if you watched the trailers. There are a few things that don’t quite go the way the trailers make you think they would. There are a few twists and surprise characters that aren’t seen. But for the most part, what you see the trailers is what you get on the big screen. Still, if you haven’t seen the movie and you’re avoiding spoilers, I would proceed with caution.
OK, I think that’s been enough of a warning that I’m going to talk more in detail about The Mandalorian and Grogu. Not even anything in particular, just kind of my meandering thoughts. Which for anyone who’s ever had a conversation with me, that’s how my brain works. Believe it or not, Death Star HR with it’s frequent references to The Simpsons or the Dallas Mavericks is actually me being organized and putting things in a (mostly) logical and coherent manner.
So first off, if you have the chance to see the movie in IMAX, you absolutely should do it. I had to use a Jedi Mind Trick on Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan, but I convinced her that not only should she go see a Star Wars movie with me, that we should go to the busy mall on a holiday weekend, just because it’s the closest IMAX theater.
If Star Wars is best seen on the big screen, than logically seeing it on an even bigger screen should make it even better. It’s just science. An old friend, known only as the proprietor of Ord Mantell’s only Irish pub got to watch our little green friend in something called Samsung Onyx. There are some of these screens in Texas, but unfortunately there aren’t any in the Dallas area. And adding insult to injury, the Onyx theaters are in Houston. The horror.
The movie, as friend of Death Star HR Matthew Freeman notes in his excellent write up on the movie, it’s a meditation on aging and death. Cheery! But he’s not wrong. Mando’s greatest fear is abandoning Grogu, just like he was abandoned by his parents1. We saw it in season 2.5 of The Mandalorian, AKA the last three episodes of Book of Boba Fett2. Mando had to let Grogu go join the Jedi Order, even if it metaphorically killed him. And then Grogu came back, reborn so to speak as Din Grogu. The Mandalorians were Din Darin’s family, they took him in and raised him in the ways of being a Mandalorian. And maybe the whole “kinda cultish Children of the Watch” might not have been the best environment to grow up in, you couldn’t argue that Mando didn’t receive love and support. As long as he kept his helmet on.
Here, we see Din’s greatest fear confronted. Grogu will live for hundreds of years, and The Mandalorian will not always be there to protect him. Even if they are faithful to each other through every adventure, and they overcome every foe, eventually, Din Djarin will transform into the Force before his adopted son does. A new generation is always on the horizon, needing to be nurtured, and learning to nurture in return. Something comforting is in those scenes for the fan who wonders if Star Wars will be Star Wars without the Skywalkers and John Williams and Lawrence Kasdan. Take care of what you love, even if you know it will not always need you. It will take care of you in return.
You should read the whole piece, it’s excellent as always.
Anyway, Mando keeping Grogu safe in the first two seasons and returning him to the Jedi was paying it forward. But now Grogu is family and he’s got to keep Grogu safe and teach him out to be a bounty hunter. It’s not so much a “I need to keep him alive to get him to the Jedi,” it’s “I need to keep him alive because he’s my family.” Isn’t every parent’s goal to prepare their child for going out in the world without them? Isn’t their fear that someone happens to their kid on their watch? At least I assume that’s the case. I don’t know, we just have the cat. Mando knows that Grogu will outlive him. He figures out early on that whatever species Grogu is ages differently, the Twins just confirm this for him.
It’s weird watching a Star Wars movie that’s not for you. I say that and I’ll immediately kind of take it back. All Star Wars movies are for me since I’m an overgrown child with disposable income and the Walt Disney Corporation knows I’m an easy mark. But from a certain point of view, there’s never actually been a Star Wars movie for me. I was too young for Mom Mothma and Darth Dad to take me to see the Original Trilogy. By the time the Prequels came out my Star Wars thoughts were already shaped by seeing the OT, both original and Special Edition versions and the Expanded Universe. The Prequels for the younger kids, the kids that Lucas needed to hook to keep Star Wars going. That line in Fight Club when Tyler Durden says ““We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s The Clone Wars…”, that’s people my age with Star Wars. I’m pretty sure that’s how the quote goes.
And while Disney would prefer people like me continue to spend our Republic credits, the movie is really for the next generation. Call it the Baby Yoda Generation. And it seems to be alive and well. There were plenty of kids at both showings, both younger kids and groups of teenagers. Sitting next to us at Sunday’s viewing was a dad and his daughter who was probably 8 or so. She had both a Mando helmet and a blue lightsaber. While I wanted ask Dad what the hell was he thinking, there aren’t any Mandalorians who used a blue lightsaber, I thought better. Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan was already at the movies under protest. If I got kicked out of the mall for yelling “you sir, are no Paz Vizla” at some random guy on a Sunday afternoon, well, she wouldn’t be very happy about that.
When I say Star Wars is in good hands with the next generation, I mean that I could see that 8 year old out of the corner of my eye, when the action on the screen heated up she’d lean forward, hand on her lightsaber like she was ready to hop up and help Mando and Grogu take on the Battle Droids. I’m 99% certain that Dad told her that she couldn’t turn the lightsaber on during the movie, because she was locked and loaded to make sure that nobody was going to hurt Grogu. All the kids and teenagers I saw walking out looked like they had a good time. Smiles on their faces and all that.
There is, of course, a brand of Star Wars “fan” that already hated the movie before it ever came out, and there’s nothing anyone can do about that. If you didn’t like The Mandalorian and Grogu, that’s fine. You don’t have to love everything But there’s so much bad faith dialog out there. Do the people who claim to be Star Wars fans actually want Star Wars to succeed? There are certainly some that seem like they don’t, like their thought process is that if enough Disney Star Wars projects fail, that somehow Star Wars will become “good” again. As the saying goes, nobody hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans.
A lot of the #DISCOURSE of course has centered around the box office returns. The Mandalorian and Grogu opened with roughly the same numbers as Solo, a movie that Disney considers a failure. However, there’s always a however, it’s worth thinking about two things. First is that Solo cost a lot more money. It had a budget around $265 million vs around $165 million for The Mandalorian and Grogu. It’s also worth remembering that 2018, when Solo came out, had a much different media environment. Streaming obviously existed, but you still hadn’t yet seen the breakup and all the different companies insisting on having their own platform. 2018 would have been Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime as the major players. Not like what we see today.
At this point it feels somewhat pointless to compare movie-going today with the before times, but I don’t think it can be underestimated how much COVID changed the movies. We all got used to being indoor cats. Not to mention all the reports of people who don’t remember how to act at the movies3, it’s not a surprise people have slowed down with the movie going. The box office numbers are only now getting back to where they were pre-COVID. Add in the fact that things are just more expensive now. Back in high school and college, we used to go to a lot of movies. In 1998, the average movie ticket price was $4.69. If it tracked with inflation it would be somewhere between $7.11 and $9.59. I’m leaning towards the latter simply because the number comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I am not sure how many under $10.00 movie tickets there are in Dallas. Not many. The total cost to see The Mandalorian and Grogu in IMAX, with tickets, “convenience” fee, and tax was $48.02. And that was with a 15% discount for ordering matinee tickets.
Which leads to the last point. Money is tight for a lot of people these days. Just to pick a random day from earlier this year, say February 27th, gas in the OK city of Dallas was $2.64. Since then, prices have been as high as $4.30ish. Wonder if anything incredibly stupid happened on February 28th that caused gas prices to shoot up? Who can say. At the grocery store today, tomatoes that are usually between $0.99 and $1.49 a pound were $2.49. Everything is going up, except wages. This isn’t an airing of the grievances about the failing state of America, but rather to point out there is a not insignificant portion of this country that would look at that $50 I spent on seeing the movie, and think to themselves “I can go to the movies for a couple hours, or I can buy gas and groceries.” I’m not sure we are exactly in a good space to compare box office returns in 2018 to box office returns in 2026.
I warned you this was a rambling post about The Mandalorian and Grogu.
Now that I’m comfortable talking about spoilers, a few other things I wanted to touch on.
There was way more Rotta the Hutt than I was expecting and I certainly was not expecting him to end up being buddies with Mando and Grogu and especially not expecting Rotta to (maybe) join the New Republic. Also, we absolutely need a reunion between Ahsoka and Stinky in season 2 of Ahsoka.
I would some credit for not just turning Death Star HR into a Star Wars/Simpsons memes newsletter. I’ve been showing remarkable restraint. In case you’re wondering about the reference.
It was weird seeing a Hutt that not only didn’t speak Huttese, but he spoke Basic without the accent. I feel like that kind of a strange choice. Although as I’m thinking about it, there was Ziro the Hutt in The Clone Wars who spoke basic and at the request of George Lucas, sounded like Truman Capote. Per Wookieepedia, the precedent for Basic-speaking Hutts was established because producers felt that their original idea of Ziro speaking Huttese into a translator machine wouldn’t make sense to the Younglings watching. This was when The Clone Wars was still for kids and not about committing war crimes.
Very accurate. Source. I also learned while reading about Ziro that in the Expanded Universe, Hutts did not have a sex, like slugs in our galaxy. However in canon, there are male and female Hutts. The more you know.
So I can’t be the only one who basically thought the movie was basically one of those food/travel shows. It was like Grogu was Anthony Bourdain and it was Parts Unknown: Outer Rim. I think the only place Grogu wasn’t able to get a snack was at Adelphi Base, and that’s only because Colonel Ward took the bowl of snacks back, quite rudely I might add. You probably have to credit Grogu’s snack habit to Jon Favreau. He did write, direct, and star in the movie Chef. Which is about a Chef. He also had a cooking show on Netflix with himself and chef Roy Choi. But it’s a fun little touch for Grogu’s character that is probably going to be appeal to younger fans.
During the middle when Grogu and the Anzellans are teaming up and trying to improve the Razor Crest 2.0, Emperor Palpatine’s #1 Fan leaned over and whispered “so those guys are just Star Wars Minions, right?” And now I can’t unsee it.
I was surprised by the lack of Imperial entanglement in the movie. Basically the Imperials were out of the film after about 1/3 of the way through. Just for the record, my predicted plot was that Mando and Grogu are working for New Republic hunting down members of the Imperial Remanent. The Twins have a deal with the Imperials that they’ll get rid of Mando, who’s causing too much trouble, in exchange for the Imps leaving their criminal dealings alone. I was not expecting that A) the New Republic would be making deals with the Hutts, B) that The Twins would be the Big Bads for the movie, and C) for Rotta to play such a big part and to not be a bad guy.
One of the common knocks I see is “it’s just 3 - 5 episodes of The Mandalorian as a movie.” OK that is kinda fair, and as the show made the jump to the screen, that complaint was bound to happen. But my response would be “that’s just telling a story.” Mando and Grogu went to the first place, did a thing, then went to a second place, something happened, and then there was a third act. That’s how stories go. If you break it down, you can make the exact same argument about Empire Strikes Back, it’s just 3 episodes of The Adventures of Luke Skywalker or whatever we wanted to call a Star Wars show in 1980, but made into a full length movie. How is Mando and Grogu having their adventure any different than Luke being in the Battle of Hoth, then going to Dagobah to meet Yoda and lift some rocks, and then going to Cloud City to try to rescue Han, Leia, and Chewie? It’s Act I, II, and III.
Final thought. When did the popcorn buckets become a thing? I get why movie theaters would do it. I’m sure they are pure profit. The AT-AT popcorn bucket was cool, but I showed restraint and didn’t come home with it.
I warned you these were random thoughts.
Marcia Lucas is One With The Force
Marcia Lucas, the first wife of George Lucas and Oscar-winning editor for Star Wars (back before it was called A New Hope) passed away on Wednesday, May 27th. She was 80 years old. Marcia and George were married from 1969 - 1983. In addition to Star Wars, she also worked on two of Geroge’s earlier movies, THX 1138 and American Graffiti. It wasn’t just George she worked with as well, she was the editor for Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and supervised the editing for Taxi Driver and New York, New York. The final movie she worked on, prior to their divorce, was Return of the Jedi.
Lucas (Marcia, not George) is generally credited with the Battle of Yavin turning out the way it did.
George credited the editor for the film’s final battle sequence, telling Rolling Stone in 1977, “My wife, Marcia, can normally cut a whole reel — all ten minutes of the film — in one week. I think it took her eight weeks to cut that battle. It was extremely complex and we had 40,000 feet of dialogue footage of pilots saying this and that. And she had to cull through all that, and put in all the fighting as well. Nobody really has ever tried to interweave an actual plot story into a dogfight.”
Spend enough time in the depths of Star Wars Reddit and you’ll find people who believe that all of Star Wars’ success is because of Marcia and that George had very little to do with it. I am not extremely familiar with this theory, I don’t know the ins and outs of it as I generally stay off of Reddit. I’m sure there are some people saying it just to be trolls and some people who honestly believe it and would fight you to the death. Best to stay off of Reddit.
Mando & Grogu Think-pieces Have Taken Substack by Storm
It’s not just me writing about The Mandalorian the Grogu. The Star Wars Substack crew has been as well. So make sure you check them out. Because there’s a lot of good Star Wars people on here. First off Dominic Jones write about how M&G is a new spin on Star Wars traditions.
Friend of Death Star HR and podcast guest Travis Clark asks what do fans want out of a Star Wars movie? It appears “Grogu snacking” is the top choice.
The Star Wars Legacy Reader has a positive review and notes that the Younglings coming out of the theater loved it. Star Wars is for the kids.
If you’ve got some time to kill, over at The Long Take, they live up to their name and have a two hour discussion about the movie. I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but I am sure it’s great.
And going back to the top, Hoth Off The Press ranks the various formats to see the movie in.
This Day in Star Wars History
Not a lot of entries to mention from May 31st, but two very important ones. So let’s get to it.
The corporate entity currently known as 20th Century Studios started its life on this day in 1935. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation started as a merger of the Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures. After it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch, he changed the name to 21st Century Fox until Disney bought its assets and changed the name again to avoid confusion with the Fox Corporation. 20th Century Fox of course was the studio behind the Original Trilogy and the distribution of the Prequels.
Fast-foward 84 years to 2019, and we get the opening of Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland. That was everyone’s first look at Black Spire Outpost. And it lasted up until a few weeks ago when it became the more generic Star Wars Land.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
A couple years ago I went out what can only be described as the Tatooine of Texas, the Trans-Pecos. And one of things you can do while you’re out there is go to the McDonald Observatory, just outside of Fort Davis. Being up on a mountain, in a dark skies environment, and being able to look up and see the arms of the Milky Way really puts in perspective just how huge the universe is, and just how small we are and how all the things we think are important are completely irrelevant on a cosmic scale. And if that’s what you can see at an observatory powered by the University of Texas, just imagine what you could see if Palpatine was funding it. That’s right, this week we’ve got the Emperor’s Observatory.
The Emperor's Observatory was a bunker on the planet Pillio. It was one of many observatories that Emperor Palpatine, also the Dark Lord of the Sith, established across the galaxy. Each observatory looked beyond the galactic rim with the intent of finding what laid beyond the known galaxy, and each had a specific purpose. The Pillio observatory contained a number of items the Emperor had collected before his death, such as a compass. The bunker had no locking or unlocking mechanism, and it could only be opened with the Force.
So it was either a spot of great power where Palpatine could look beyond the known galaxy, or it was basically a storage unit for Dark Side junk.
News From the HoloNet
The Mandalorian And Grogu Proves Star Wars Fans Are Missing The Point — My Son Showed Me The Way
seeds
I liked Skeleton Crew, it was a fun romp. But I’m not sure season 2 is needed.
Disney Reveals Star Wars Spinoff ‘Ahsoka’ Is 30% Cheaper Than ‘The Acolyte’
Likely going to see a lot of this going forward. Likely that the days of big budget TV shows are done.
The new Star Wars movie was partially filmed on Caddo Lake. See how it happened.
#TEXASFOREVER
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.
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Saying someone was abandoned by their parents usually has a negative connotation. But in Din’s case, it wasn’t his parents fault as they were killed during The Clone Wars.
It is wild that there are back to back episodes of BoBF where the title character is essentially absent.
Thankfully I really haven’t seen this, other than the guy at Fight Club a few weeks ago who would occasionally shout words of encouragement at Edward Norton’s character.
As for movie experiences, Jeff, meet old friend Mark Finn. Mark, meet Jeff, a new friend. We’ve GOT to schedule a hangout for you two. https://ntab.substack.com/p/weekly-briefing-from-the-north-texas-1ca?r=3x4p35&utm_medium=ios