Bummed

Our first trailer for the next Star Wars movie has arrived and it looks incredibly forgettable. Fans are picking apart a 90-second clip of The Mandalorian and Grogu and mourning the franchise’s loss of visual identity. Is Disney’s take on the sci-fi galaxy far, far away cooked, or is this just how a movie about a dude in a helmet and a green puppet is going to look in the year 2025?

Is the Mandalorian and Grogu trailer bad-looking? Yes. Is that sort of what I expected from the post-Disney+ entertainment industrial complex in the age of streaming? Also yes. Does any of this matter? Not to me. I did not stick around through three increasingly mediocre seasons of The Mandalorian for the second coming of Akira Kurosawa. I am coming to the movie to see some weird-looking aliens, goofy robots, and flashy lasers blow some stuff up. Even by those standards the teaser was a C minus, but the latest example of Star Wars mediocrity has some fans fully crashing out.

I don’t want to sound negative but this trailer makes the movie feel more like a filler episode of the TV show. Even visually it doesn’t look like an upgrade. https://t.co/UqCJyzwrcw

— Daniel Richtman (@DanielRPK) September 22, 2025

They had the opportunity make a beautiful space western set in the Star Wars universe and they cooked up abysmal dogshit instead. Movie made for the sole purpose of selling more Grogu toys. https://t.co/YwRwdxHu7M

— Barto (@bartonovopolis) September 22, 2025

Do you remember when The Mandalorian used to look like this? Where did we go wrong… https://t.co/nw6ieNXuse

— The Sietch of Sci-Fi | (@TSoS_) September 22, 2025

Couldn’t even bother to make this look like it belongs on the big screen. Disney Plus at the movies. https://t.co/gD2KPxtCOq

— Jeff Zhang 张佶润 (@strangeharbors) September 22, 2025

(This isn’t a comment on the quality)

There was a time when a new Star Wars trailer was an EVENT in itself. You would hear the rumours swirling & the fake descriptions going around. And when it dropped and we got our first NEW glimpse…it was magical.

That feeling is long gone https://t.co/GOmTwk3L4Q

— ΩStuntman MikeΩ (@Stuntman_Mik3) September 22, 2025

Mando so bad it’s fast tracking sequel redemption by like 10 years https://t.co/dHynhKAu14

— ol snokey (@snoketube) September 22, 2025

this could be fun but it really shows how much Disney have cheapened their brand that the first Star Wars movie in 7 years just looks like a more expensive episode of a TV show in every possible way https://t.co/LELjKg5Bor

— Brendan Hodges (@metaplexmovies) September 22, 2025

look what they took from us https://t.co/Xp7Cgnfj4L pic.twitter.com/XRIgr7G7ib

— Shadow Knight (@shadowknightdk) September 22, 2025

In case you think this is just an algorithmically spawned dunkfest, the vibes are similar on YouTube. “This just looks like one episode of the show,” reads one comment. “I feel like people were more excited for the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith re release than for this one,” reads another. My favorite, though, is this summary: “50% of the comments: Jimmy Kimmel and the Empire, 49.9% of the comments: This Looks Like Season 4, 0.01%: Somehow Razor Crest returned!” Folks on Reddit are taking things more in stride. “Kinda looks like it’s just supposed to be fun, which I totally dig,” reads the top reaction. “Like if it’s just a movie length episode I’m down with that.”

That is about what I expected as well. I think it’s partly a testament to how much the Disney Star Wars shows, even when they’re bad, have looked like big-budget productions that The Mandalorian and Grogu movie just looks like a feature-length episode. I also think people are being a bit dramatic in rushing to judge a teaser for a film about back-bench characters who didn’t exist until just a few years ago against the most iconic stills across decades of original movies. It also feels like people have forgotten that Jon Favreau is directing.

What are the most memorable shots that come to mind from Elf, Zathura: A Space Adventure, and Cowboys & Aliens? I’ll wait. He’s not that type of director. The most visually arresting 60 seconds of footage he ever recorded was himself cooking a grilled cheese in Chef. He brings other virtues to his filmmaking, most of which are probably hard to get across in a 90-second teaser where almost no one talks. That is not a defense of The Mandalorian and Grogu, but it’s a point worth keeping in mind when judging the pre-release marketing for a movie about a stoic cowboy and his green muppet baby that’s literally called The Mandalorian and Grogu.

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The Battlefield 6 open betas proved exceptionally popular earlier this month for many, but a significant portion of the PC playerbase were met with a daunting wall to play thanks to the game’s Secure Boot requirement. This technical hurdle is in place for the game’s anti-cheat, a kernel-level bit of software dedicated to curbing a rising cheating problem across online FPS games.

Alas, the Battlefield 6 beta still had a few cheaters running around and ruining things for their fellow players. To find out more about whether Battlefield 6’s Javalin anti-cheat was successful in the eyes of EA, Eurogamer sat down to talk to Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl. Buhl would express pride at the anti-cheat team’s work, sadness for those unable to play due to the Secure Boot requirement, and resigned to him and his peer’s fate in the endless battle against cheaters.

Cheeck out some Battlefield 6 multiplayer gameplay here!Watch on YouTube

“We were pretty happy with how the anti-cheat performed,” Buhl beamed when asked how he felt the anti-cheat held up during the betas. “Obviously I’ll say we can never be perfect, anti-cheat is always a cat-and-mouse game where we’re constantly going back and forth and keeping on top of what the cheaters are doing. But from the beginning this was something we put a high priority on, so when we launch this game we have a really strong anti-cheat program in place.”

Buhl would elaborate by sharing that Battlefield 6 had two anti-cheat teams working on the game, in what he described as a “pretty massive investment” by EA. There’s the EA anti-cheat team that built the Javalin anti-cheat team, as well as the Battlefield 6 anti-cheat team that focused on “integrating EA’s technology as well as monitoring and all the other responsibilities you’d expect from an anti-cheat team”.

The reason for this expense is to ensure a “fair play experience”, which was “critical to Battlefield’s success” according to Buhl. The cost for the user is granting additional access to Battlefield Studios’ and EA’s anti-cheat, as well as enabling Secure Boot on their PC. This led to many turning away from the PC beta, something Buhl is bummed out about.

Those able to get the game running are having a blast.

“The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot” Buhl admits. “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play: that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”

Buhl continues: “Unfortunately these are some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating. Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating.”

So where does this cat-and-mouse game end? Does it ever end, and will players have to get used to providing kernel-level access, enabling Secure Boot, and opening their door to other technical requirements for new games?

“The short answer is it never ends,” states Buhl. “We expect our anti-cheat team will continue working on technology, and if at some point there’s a new technological requirement that we’ll have to add that’s critical to securing the fairness of the game, we’ll do that. Or we’ll certainly evaluate that. Anti-cheat never ends, it’s a constant cat-and-mouse game. We’re never going to win. Hopefully they’re never going to win. But in the end, we want to be as safe and secure as possible.

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Star Wars Fans Are Bummed About How Boring Mandalorian And Grogu Looks

It really sucks” Battlefield 6 technical director bummed out about those unable to play due to Secure Boot requirement, believes anti-cheat cat-and-mouse game will “never end