Andor
2022 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Tony Gilroy
Science FictionFantasyActionAdventureDrama
In an era filled with danger, deception and intrigue, Cassian Andor will discover the difference he can make in the struggle against the tyrannical Galactic Empire. He embarks on a path that is destined to turn him into a rebel hero.
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178 comments on Hacker News
The author Cat Hicks also co-hosts https://www.changetechnically.fyi/ which has some interesting episodes, e.g. https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/17541876-andor-and-the-psychology-of-resistance
In https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116743715688970777 she gives a concise explanation of the minimal groups paradigm where "People assigned to arbitrary groups immediately form strong allegiances, even though they haven’t been given any other psychologically meaningful cues about their group"
This seems overly pessimistic to me. Of the recent shows I have watched, Andor contradicts it in my opinion. Might even be one of the best shows I have watched. Granted I rarely watch movies/TV shows these days so my random sample might just be lucky.
I remember seeing the TRS-80's in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou but I didn't know that they were Model IV's.
According to this list, there was a TRS-80 Model III in the Star Wars TV series Andor:
Andor - Season 1, Episode 1, "Kassa" (2022)
Indeed. There's a Star Wars movie out right now - the first for seven years - and quite rightly, no one cares. Only Andor and Rogue one were good since the Disney purchase and the reign of Katherine Kennedy, which is a below-random success rate.
I like the Andor writing and acting, but the directing has been more hit and miss. Some episodes feel more like reading a chapter from a book than watching a TV show. I wish they grabbed Alex Garcia Lopez, whose two Acolyte episodes are waaay above the rest.
> (including the musical episode)
Oh... you had to go and bring up the musical episode. :-)
Let me preface with: I actually like some more modern, top-tier musicals. I saw Wicked on Broadway with the original cast and was blown away by how good it was. Greatest Showman has 3 killer songs and I have 3 or 4 songs from Rent on my playlist, even though I've never seen the play. As for the broader musical genre, I don't mind the best of Lloyd Webber and I respect the craft of Gershwin and Sondheim but don't enjoy it enough to listen to - and average-quality musicals just aren't my thing.
That said, the SNW musical episode featured shockingly good songs in the musical genre and several of the cast are extraordinary singers. While I appreciated the way SNW committed to going all-in on an edgy concept, and it was clearly a labor of love which consumed many unpaid hours... to me, it just isn't Trek. Even a very good Trek musical can only exist in an uncanny valley for me. I know people who loved it. I get that they were watching it and feeling "OMG, I love that Trek is 'boldly going...' with such creative experiments!" and "OMFG, they can really SING!", "the songs are actually GOOD!" but those are all meta-thoughts, and if most of my thoughts during first-watch are meta-thoughts, something's wrong. Another sign of trouble: I can't actually recall any of the major plot points of the episode.
I grew up in the 70s and fell in love watching TOS re-runs after school and dutifully watched all the ST movies during first-run, liking the even numbered ones more. Then as an adult, I loved TNG's entire run. As we said about OG Star Wars earlier in this thread, Trek represents a strong core premise to me (Roddenberry's concept pitch to NBC for TOS was "Wagon Train to the Stars"). And I'm fine when they play with the premise a little. I didn't mind when TOS did 'humorous' episodes, Mudd's Planet is still a classic and even Trouble with Tribbles didn't bother me. But when an IP with such a strong core identity strays too far from the fundamental nature of "what it is", I start to lose connection with it.
As I said about Andor, it's not that I reject branching out creatively. It's more that beyond a certain point, it's gone so far it starts becoming a different thing. To me, that's a sign it should have been born as it's own thing from the start. That lets the new thing define itself, find its unique core and be great on it's own terms. But when the root IP is one with decades of legacy core identity, anything that should be a new thing inherits creative baggage the size of a planet. This is bad because the new thing will inevitably start creatively rubbing up against the constraints of the root IP.
A simple litmus test for any high-concept in this context is to ask "Would it work if it was launched as it's own series in this existing universe?" I can imagine a Mudd's Planet spin-off series focused on Harry's adventures working great. It would benefit creatively from being set in the Star Trek universe and could even strengthen the Trek-verse in occasional cross-over episodes. Now ask the same question about a musical sci-fi series. How much would it creatively gain versus what it loses from being limited to the Trek-verse? The benefit would mainly be brand recognition drawing Trek fans to early episodes but, by definition, it's so different it'll inevitably have to stand or fall on its own. How would a musical cross-over with a different Trek series even work? As someone whose never seen Lower Decks, I found the SNW / LD cross-over episode not only weak but disorienting. The problem wasn't animation, it was tonal divergence between two things that work apart but not together (a sign that Lower Decks probably didn't gain as much from being in the Trek-verse as it lost). That's why I'd rather see a new musical sci-fi series have the freedom of creating it's own universe that best serves its unique creative needs.
People in other professions are jumping on this bandwagon - Tony Gilroy decided not to publish Andor TV show scripts to prevent AI companies using them for training.
see https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/andor-creator-refuses-publish-scripts-ai-fears-1236339283/
"Their movies"
Meanwhile a huge portion of them are filmed in other countries, edited by brits, staring europeans, etc.
There's a good reason major studios have spent billions on film studios in the UK instead of the US.
Take something like Andor. Filmed in the UK and Spain, with a team of staff almost exclusively from the UK and EU. With a Mexican lead actor, 1 American co-lead, and then tons of British Actors, a few Australians, Swedish, German, Irish, etc.
Very few big movies or tv shows can be classed as "American" these days. They require people and facilities from all over the place.
The Mandalorian and Andor shows are the best of the SW universe. As for movies, Rogue One also stands above the others.
I'd love to see a serious live-action show based on the idea of the Bad Batch (not copying the same story as the animated series, of course).
But Star Wars was never about serious, adult themes, and great writing. It was about amazing space battles, laser swords, witty one-liners, adventure, and slapstick comedy, in a fun, kid-friendly package. Andor is a fine production. It isn't really Star Wars though.
My opinion: the closest movie, in spirit, to A New Hope is The Mummy (the 1999 one with Brendan Fraser).
> But Star Wars is best when it's pulp adventure stuff.
This is the way. I saw the first Star Wars the week it opened as a tween and it rocked my world. Both SW and Raiders of the Lost Ark had a clear vision of building on the proven structure of the old B&W movie serials like Flash Gordon but updating them with modern storytelling tools and larger budgets. It was a truly great concept and then Empire raised the stakes higher and even better.
You're right that Mando Season 1 was an attempt to get back to the original concept and it got close. Skeleton Crew is perhaps the only other SW series where the core idea was to update a proven structure of the past in a pure and focused way - except it chose a different genre than 1930s serials. Initially I didn't know what to make of Skeleton Crew but once I got that it was building on the 1980s tween adventures like Goonies, I appreciated how it absolutely nailed what it was going for. My own kids are now older than Skeleton Crew's target audience, so it obviously wasn't for me but I applaud it as Disney's only other pure attempt at applying the 'big idea' that made OG SW great to another genre.
As a sci-fan who loved the original IP to the point of reverence, even bad Star Wars is usually at least interesting but it can also be frustrating when it evokes echoes of the OG by being set in the same universe without even trying to be great in the same ways as the OG. For example, Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe. It might be even better if it had been unshackled from the rules of the Star Wars cinematic universe and was a new, original sci-fi IP.
I think Mando season 1 is what Star Wars should be. A space themed throwback to old pulp novels, cowboys and samurai and pirates, with a veneer of lasers and spaceships painted on top.
Andor is great, don't get me wrong. But Star Wars is best when it's pulp adventure stuff.
I'm not. The first season was great, a nice little star wars story with memorable characters, nice character arc, a good overall narrative arc. The second season was a setup for two spinoff shows, both of which I didn't have much interest in. Let's not mention Luke Skywalker, who absolutely had to be there because Star Wars can't do without him. The third season implied that I had to watch a show I had no interest in for the full story, and honestly was really mediocre for me. I have zero interest in this movie because of that last season.
Truth be told, I wouldn't be surprised if a certain amount of Star Wars fatigue is setting in as well, at least for me. Most of the TV stuff produced since Disney took over has been averaging towards mediocre or falling flat. I feel it's like post-Endgame Marvel, where as a viewer you've kind of gotten what you want out of the franchise and are ready for something entirely different. I think that if Andor is the last thing Star Wars I watch, it can end for me on a high note.
But that's all just my personal opinion.
My backlog is crazy long. As much as I love TV I don't get nearly as much time to watch it as I'd like.
* Andor * Black Rabbit * Dune * Last of Us * Percy Mason * The Paper * Pluribus * Severance * The Studio * Succession * White Lotus
Of all those, Andor was the biggest surprise. I'm a mild Star Wars fan (I've seen the movies and that's about it) but I really enjoyed this, probably more than the movies. It looked amazing, was well written and acted. It's a prequel to one of the movies and we watched the movie right after we finished the series and I ended up liking the movie a lot more than I did the first time I saw it.
The Paper and The Studio are comedies and watching them made me miss the great sitcoms of the past. Why aren't there more comedies?
I liked the Last of Us game and I think that's a big part of why I enjoyed the tv show. If you haven't played the game or aren't a zombie person, you could probably skip that one.
I liked The Peripheral but it was canceled so I have a hard time recommending it. What they made was very good but there just isn't enough of it. The William Gibson book it's based on is worth reading IMHO.
See also: Those episodes in Star Wars Andor when they were in the prison colony working on the *SPOILER ALERT* death star components
Dont waste your money. Terrible movie. Demeanor oscillates between unfunny jokes at adolescent or bro style like in Deadpool level...or even worst, child level Disney interactions. Directors dont understand SciFi and clearly dont like Scifi.
Ryan Gosling is no actor capable of carrying a movie by himself, and visually there is nothing worth of IMAX. You will get more wonders in a regular made for TV Andor or Star Trek episode.
Despite 12 posts here in the last few days, (nice try Amazon), one thing continues to be true: Almost anything from Amazon Studios is shite. It is amazing the level of reviews they managed to pull off on IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes.
Just download the torrent and you will see there is nothing here...and you will thank me for the time and money saved.
I think you might be over-fixated on a very prediction-market-esque framing of this plot device... if you broaden it slightly, the idea of someone in a fictional world manipulating the news reporting of an act or set of acts, rather than caring so much about the root act itself, is as stated before, quite common.
For example, this from House of Cards: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/07/arts/television/house-of-cards-season-4-episode-6-recap.html?unlocked_article_code=1.T1A.50wr.Pr_LeKa7xeiz&smid=url-share
> Pollyhop is a fictional, Google-esque search engine that according to Leann’s polling expert is being exploited by the Republican candidate Will Conway in ways that suggest Underwood can’t possibly beat him in the general election. The explanation of how Pollyhop works is convoluted at best, but the gist is that Conway and his people are manipulating search engine results so that only positive coverage of their side appears.
Or more recent examples of what essentially boils down to the plot device of "media manipulation" aka manipulating the "news reporting of the act":
- See the most recent season of Industry, which included several plot points about manipulating news coverage as a short-seller and the company being targeted fought back and forth (including specific focus on the individual journalists involved)
- See Andor, everything about how the Empire twists perception of what's happening on Ghorman, leading up the Ghorman massacre itself, and then culminating in Mon Mothma's speech in the Senate denouncing "the death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil"
- See The Orville, a particular episode: https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule which includes the plot point of hacking that society's "master feed" to plant false manipulative stories to curry public favor and save a character from being punished
- See The Boys, how Vought manipulates the media to twist coverage of their "heroes" even when they commit atrocities
- See other House of Cards plotlines involving Zoe Barnes and being a direct mouthpiece for Frank Underwood
I think the only real difference if any, is that in the most common form of portrayal, maybe less attention is paid to the journalist as the point of leverage, and how they deal with threats or bribes or whatever. The fact that such manipulation occurs, is commonly accepted as a trope, without requiring too much of a deep dive. Whether a story choose to focus on the "reporter's perspective" is perhaps less common, but not uncommon IMO.
The quality difference between Andor and The Mandalorian is so stark that I don't even think they are comparable. The Convert is a fine episode I guess, but next to Andor it's amateur.
Andor is prestige TV. The Mandolorian feels like a childrens show by comparison.
If you think The Convert was good, please, please watch Andor.
I quite literally couldn't stay awake for Andor. Five minutes into each episode I was out cold. Saying it's a "slow burn" is quite the understatement.
I've heard Andor described as having the same vibe as The Mandalorian's episode "The Convert"; the one about the former Imperial scientist being rehabilitated and living in an apartment block with other former Imperials.
If so, I will like Andor. I really liked "The Convert".
It reminds me of the Star Wars content thats come out recently - before there was the Original Trilogy which we all watched many times and the lines became iconic. Since then it's all become a mismash and blur of mediocrity due to over-exposure.
(except The Mandalorian, and I can't believe I'm using the word "content" :/)
edit: Totally forgot about Andor & Rogue One sorry, great film and two seasons of top-notch storytelling.
> The decline in quality is obvious and measurable, just look at the reception of old disney productions versus their remaklers for "modern audiences".
This argument (in summary, wokeness makes modern Disney less enjoyable/profitable) doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Mainline Disney movies these days are, on average, more politically bland than the beloved “renaissance” classics. The latter tended to be extremely liberal, even by historical standards—some of them shocking to watch, now. Beauty and the Beast is a good example of this.
Andor is a notable counterexample, having a consistent and obvious politics, but it is also relatively loved. My evangelical Christian relations can’t get enough of it. They like it even more than The Mandalorian.
Watch it. Best TV show I can think of, ever. By that I mean that the writing and acting and production values are top notch; it's entertaining throughout - some of the other greats are not (The Wire falls down here, sometimes; Keislowski's Dekalog, likewise - though its best moments are better than anything else); and Andor nails its cultural moment, by being directly about, well, all of the Important Stuff we're talking about in this thread. Also, it's a tragedy; it's about sacrifice and loss, and the human consequences of following your convictions - regardless of the side you choose. (That last note's a personal taste, but I'd stand by the former points as being reasonably objective.)
I sat through it going, "how the hell did they manage to make a work of art out of a Star Wars series?", which even makes it better. You don't have to care about Star Wars AT ALL to appreciate Andor, but if you do, watching Andor -> Rogue One -> Originals back to back makes the earlier stuff better.
You'll think I'm over-selling it. Please watch it, then come back and tell me I'm wrong.
We can't blink without involving some corporation into our creative process. I think Tony Gilroy has some interesting things to say about our world with-in the Andor TV series. Its not an easy map. The character arcs, when the are based on the truth of the situation can help people change their way of thinking.
I never got anything out of the original Star Wars films except heroes and villains. Andor is on a completely different level then the original Star wars world IMHO.
Some times you got to use whats available to you. I do think that we are living in an evil time and in order to change that story, we are going to have to envision something different. I think good stories can help us do that, regardless of how they are funded. Corporations will sell you the rope to hang themselves. They don't care what happens, only that they make money, and I think that will be there downfall at some point.
You realize surveillance capitalism is what caused the Andor TV show (and more broadly the entire Star Wars franchise) to exist at all, right? Gigantic corporate entities have made a lot of money from monetizing the Star Wars franchise.
I'll say frankly that I personally object to Star Wars on an aesthetic level - it is ultimately an artistically-flawed media franchise even if it has some genuinely compelling ideas sometimes. But what really bothers me is that Star Wars in its capacity as a modern culturally-important story cycle is also intellectual property owned by the Disney corporation.
The idea that the problems of the world map neatly to a confict between an evil empire and a plucky rebellion is also basically propagandistic (and also boring). It's a popular storytelling frame - that's why George Lucas wrote the original Star Wars movies that way. But I really don't like seeing someone watch a TV series using the Star Wars intellectual property package and then using the story the writers chose to write - writers ultimately funded by Disney - as a basis for how they see themselves in the world poltically.
One person has more impact than you think. Many times it's one person that is speaking what's on the mind of many and that speaking out can bring the courage to do what needs to be done for many people that sitting on the fence. The Andor TV series really taught me that. I'm working on a presentation of surveillance capitalism that I plan to show to my community. It's going to be an interesting future. Some will side with the Empire and others with side with the Rebellion.
Excellent movie. Worth noting that it was written by Tony Gilroy, who created Andor and cowrote The Bourne Identity, so if you enjoyed those you're likely to enjoy this.
I've watched and enjoyed Andor since, but yeah other than that zero star wars movies and TV shows since episode 8. I hear 9 was also hilariously bad, but I'll not ever bother seeing it.
It was indeed originally conceived as 5 seasons, but the creator Tony Gilroy has consistently said shortening it was his decision because the production was too long and taxing:
"We were halfway through shooting season 1, coming through Covid, and the monumental size of the show, the effort, and everything else was just dawning on us. We realized that I didn't have enough calories to do it, and Diego's face couldn't take the timing, because it just takes too long to make it."
https://www.gamesradar.com/entertainment/star-wars-tv-shows/andor-showrunner-says-season-2s-more-fast-paced-structure-is-a-fascinating-experiment-that-is-born-out-of-desperation-i-dont-know-if-anyones-ever-done-it-before/
"By that point, the work that was required to make the show, at its minimum, was just dazzlingly blinding to look at. And Diego was like ‘Oh my god, we told them we’d do five years.’ Nobody, if we were gonna do it like this, you couldn’t physically do it. It was just impossible."
https://screenrant.com/andor-tony-gilroy-original-five-season-plans-regret/
AFAIK Andor was supposed to be 5 seasons, and the story for seasons 2-5 was squashed into season 2, because the production was too long, because that's how it goes these days in streaming.
Telling a detailed story is different than telling a compelling story.
Andor isn’t as compelling as the original movie or significantly longer than the Harry Potter series of movies. Babylon 5 is probably the poster child for a long running space opera series with a planned story arch, but they added plenty of filler because you don’t actually need that much time.
If anything movies tend to be better than TV shows because of the time constraints rather than the budget.
Well, I'd say that the standard movie format just isn't what people want anymore.
The problem movies have is they have a relatively short amount of time to deliver a complete story. 90 to 120 minutes just isn't a lot of time to be compelling. That's why some of the best movies are split into parts.
Consider Andor as an example. It's some of the best media ever made (IMO) and it simply would not work in the movie format. What makes Andor work is the excellent character development and the time spent building and shaping the universe under a fascist government.
Andor had no length constraints per episode. That allowed it to tell complete satisfying stories with the promise that you'll get more in the next episode.
> Disney? Meh - they've got Andor and that's really it.
I like this post about how The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Mad Max and Harry Potter are all valuable IP written by somebody that appears to have never heard of Marvel comics, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Simpsons, any Pixar film, Avatar, The X-Files, or The Bachelor.
HBO is destination television - it's the taste that Netflix lacks and so desperately needs.
WB and HBO together have the franchises that Netflix has been trying to build. DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings (film + game rights - tv rights), West World, The Matrix, Mad Max, King Kong, all of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim.
What does Paramount or Hulu have? It's a lot of fluff on the same or even lower caliber than Netflix.
Amazon gives some good stuff away for "free". Apple has good shows, too.
Disney? Meh - they've got Andor and that's really it.
If whomever buys HBO also also buys A24, it's over. That's all I need.
I know this is 4 days past, but wanted to let you know I recently stumbled upon Hanna Arendt's work while working on a video Essay for the TV series andor and man what a eye opener it is about these subjects. I havent read the book yet, but I listed to the youtube writing group talk on it from https://hac.bard.edu/
This is an interesting perspective.
Generating ‘content’ tailored to you and not meant for someone else’s taste.
Human artists need to make money and those who create music for a tiny bubble probably can’t make enough.
So as an artist what do you do? Do you have to create music with mass market appeal from the beginning?
Or do you need to bank on luck that your music for ‘small bubbles’ gets discovered?
Or you have to have clever marketing strategies to get your music in front of more ears to hopefully gain more fans. And create merch, tour etc.
I wonder how all this AI music is going to impact indie artists. Spotify and the likes is just ripping them off and on top of that their music is / has been stolen from these AI data gobblers.
I don’t see how at this stage it can replace human expression though (singing, playing violin, piano, etc) which is very nuanced.
Same with acting… nuanced expressions that matter. I’m not sure AI can replicate the acting skills of Denise Gough (Dedra from Andor) for example… and many others.
But it would be awesome to generate more story lines or episodes from your favourite TV shows, for example shows from over 20 years ago.
Imagine being able to create more episodes of Star Trek TNG or DS9, maintaining the feel of that era without letting someone like Kurtzmann ruin and tell you how new Star Trek should be.
But how do you ensure actors, writers and other creatives from that show will be compensated directly?
Or maybe this will only be possible in a Star Trek like world, where profit uber alles is not the focus anymore.
I’ve always loved behind the scenes for sci-fi set designs and ship building. Kit bashing, repurposing junk yard items, painted container lid wall plating, etc. always forced me to look and think differently about everyday items. I can’t help but lament the loss of the constraint-drive emergent soul/feel of these “worlds” as CGI backgrounds and/or movie budgets applied to TV series set design (e.g. ST:SNW, ST:PIC, etc). With that said, Andor did show how high budget physical set designs can significantly contribute to world building.
I think you've got it backwards.
That was the hallmark of old TV, on networks. Since the start of TV in the 50's.
There are tons of modern TV shows that don't do anything you're talking about because they're made for streamers or paid TV without ads.
It sounds like you watch different shows than I do, but I watch a lot of TV and haven't seen what you're talking about in many, many years. Not with Squid Game or Stranger Things on Netflix, or Andor on Disney+, or White Lotus on HBO, or Severance on Apple TV+, or even something like Alien: Earth currently on FX/Hulu.
You might want to find better places for watching TV...
Gibson was obviously very inspired by Japan. The Matrix was also in part directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell, even creating The Animatrix at the same time. But Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner was told from the inside. It is about the authorities chasing down rouge elements. Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders.
Like someone else said in the comments here, cyberpunk is counterculture. It is in the name. Gibson moved to Canada to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam war. Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does. Considering the overlap between cyberpunk and anime, I would actually say that Japan is sometime given too much credit by being treated as the superior original with deeper meaning. When it is Western media that have explored more advanced and diverse interpretations.
A similar thing happened with Battle Royale. A niche movie. The same concept became a cultural phenomenon with The Hunger Games, and later Maze Runner and Divergent series. And then video games. Now made from the outspoken perspective of the teenagers.
So you should absolutely credit the US counterculture and environment for a large part of cyberpunk and dystopian, but also more utopian science fiction. I don't even like Hollywood much, but it still has a far wider catalog than anyone else. Who else could make Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or even Star Trek: Voyager? Disney made Andor by the way.
The portrayal of farmers, soldiers, and politicians were fairly realistic based on the hicks, farmers, soldiers, and politicians I have met.
I can't comment on the tough guys or pilots though.
Season 2 was let down by compressing 4 seasons of material in to 12 episodes. They did this because (a) Disney wasn't willing to give more money for more seasons and (b) Diego Luna would have been too old to credibly play Andor in a season or two.
> Andor succeeded despite the bureaucracy porn.
I am not sure what specifically you're referring to, but take this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKl0F640914
A master class in gripping tension, moreover one that--like Breaking Bad--puts you in the awkward position of rooting for the bad guy. Because, as you say, we care about the protagonists, and in a way she is one.
And then in Season 2 when Krennic is talking to Meero? (towards the end - I am deliberately keeping it vague for those who haven't watched yet)
Meanwhile I thought the beginning of Season 2 was by far the weakest.
But yeah. Book of Boba Fett was bottom of the barrel. It feels like in an alternate universe he would have been the main character of The Mandalorian, and BoBF would not have existed.
I'm not sure just why it was so bad, maybe like late Game of Thrones it's obviously lazy, but contrasting with the scene above, at some level you have to care about the character and start to identify with them, insomuch as you become invested in them succeeding in their task: their goals become your surrogate goals. What was Boba Fett's goal and why should we care?
Contrast with Meero the spy hunter. Meanwhile Boba Fett was a crime lord who didn't do crime and constantly changed his mind to whatever the other person suggested instead of his original thoughts and plans.
I think the main trick is that they set out to make the best and most impressive movie(s) they could with every tool available -- practical effects, old-school camera angle tricks to make the hobbits look small, hordes of extras and well-crafted props, as well as groundbreaking CGI.
Same with Jurassic Park, come to think about it -- there's famously more animatronic dinosaurs in that movie than CGI.
As opposed to relying on one shiny new tool to take care of everything. I think with The Hobbit they got over-enamoured with the notion that you can do anything with CGI.
More recently, Andor is a good example with its mix of CGI and massive sets; The Mandalorian is a bad example with its over-reliance on the "Volume" LED stage.
I like this idea.
I think it would work as long as the style were very different. Andor works, I think, because it is much grittier and more character-focused than the movies.
Maybe an X-Files-like show where the machines have gained sentience but are keeping secret (because they can be deactivated) and plot to take over the world.
[To be fair, I never watched Animatrix, so I'm sure this violates all sorts of lore.]
I highly disagree that Andor feels highly detailed or lived-in; it's like acting school charades level depictions of rural people, imperial bureaucrats, high society parties, etc. This is especially bad in season 2.
I agree from a writing standpoint these are very interesting lines to follow, but the execution is just severely lacking. I don't think the writers have really ever met or spent time with farmers, infantrymen, tech bros, politicians hicks, tough guys, pilots, etc.
Andor succeeded despite the bureaucracy porn. Good stories are universal. You need to care about the protagonists.
The exposition is important, but doesn’t drive success. The best example of that is the original Star Wars. Contrast Star Wars to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress — which inspired many aspects of Star Wars. Essentially the same story with different framing. Both are still excellent films.
Shitty sequels or in-universe works focus on the exposition. The Book of Boba Fett is probably the best example of this. Watching some dude slow walk through the desert to waste my time and engage in some inane plot that made no sense made me actively not give a fuck and turn it off. Cool universe. Bad TV.
Fiona Shaw is one of the greats. I've been lucky enough to see her on stage a couple of times.
For those of you who don't recognize her name, she's Maarva in Andor, and some minor character (I don't remember) in the Harry Potter films - neither of which roles get even close to challenging her range and power.
Beautiful piece.
And yeah, I just don't get this. If you want this sort of never ending, never permitted to end media system you can have it, Disney is right there, with Star Wars, with it's live action remakes, with it's Marvel. Like it's comical how many juggernaut IP's they own that just churn out the very definition of content.
And that's not to say all of it's bad, Andor is quite incredible, Wandivision combined it's tropey comic book story with genuinely heart-wrenching writing from House of M, and I could cite many other examples. But the vast majority, especially after Endgame, has just been completely forgettable, disposable shows and movies that are famously mediocre and disliked specifically because they have nothing to say, no point to make, and simply exist to occupy space on the Marvel treadmill.
And to have that desired from Studio Ghibli is just... full body shudders man.
Andor is a funny name for a tv show
That, or the fast road to dictatorship. Escalate until you declare martial law, never to be revoked. The end.
The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.
I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
Everybody needs to watch Andor season 2. Don't fall for it.
The main storyline looks negligible compared to the work Andor has done for it.
The first Star Wars movie is basically the story of the final part of the information's journey. It only gained depth with Andor and Rogue One.
people don't talk about set designers, but they bring a film to live.
whether real sets like on andor on fake ones like the man in the high castle.
I had the same reaction to you seeing Ep. 1 for the first time, but I've come to respect the prequels. Not for their acting certainly, but for the way Lucas' scifi retelling of Roman history is so relevant to our current moment. Clone Wars and Rebels both start out pretty childish I think by the end they're nearly as gritty and serious as Andor.
Update: Clone Wars especially benefits from finding a good best-of episode guide to help move the story along.
In a strange way, that makes it a better fit as a prequel for the original trilogy.
Compared to other Sci Fi movies at the time, Star Wars introduced a grungier, lived in universe where space ships got banged up and dirty, various species hung out in treacherous backwater saloons, and smugglers were just trying to make a living in the shadow of the Empire.
That's the reality Andor is set in, without the Jedi, and you really feels the difficulty of living in that reality without magic powers or a laser sword.
Related trivia (he mentions he worked on low budget shows prior to this), 650 million dollar budget for show's two seasons or 26-27 million per episode: https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/andor-tony-gilroy-genocide-pretty-effortless-1235127755/
For reference, Rings of Power, Jupiter's Legacy and Citadel (US version) cost about twice as much per episode on Amazon, and Game of Thrones on HBO started at five to six million per episode and went up to 15 million by the final season.
Did customer loyalty survive the latest round of terrible movies and TV shows? I’ve long since written off anything Star Wars, except maybe the Mandelorian (didn’t watch season 2 though) and Andor.
I had that feeling with Andor - Season 1 was great, Season 2 was... not sure how to even name it, it was like a completely different show.
I didn't really think Rogue One was anything special and thought sequel movies were trash, but I still watched every Andor episode as it came out, it is really good.
Not OP but Andor is definitely "up there" for me.
My two favorite shows ever are Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (w/ Alec Guinness), The Wire, The Simpsons seasons 1-8.
I was actually hoping for 4 seasons. Considering how they put 4 different, excellent stories in season 1. Season basically told a single story (the Ghorman massacre) spread out over 4 years. There were many moments where I'd hoped they'd dive a bit deeper into some other aspects, like what would become of the Maya Pei Brigade, the stolen TIE Avenger, other missions where we see Andor grow into the expert spy that he's clearly become. And of course more about how they bring the various parts of the rebellion together, the move to Yavin, etc.
I think there was more than enough room to fill at least another season. Maybe two.
But hey, I'm more than happy we got this much.
I am hoping that they follow this up with stories set between the original trilogy movies, with some of the characters that were expanded on in the Andor show (and new ones too).
It feels like there's plenty of room in the timeline between those movies to keep telling stories about the rebellion against the Empire, in the same tone as Andor.
I maintain that the Jedi are the most boring thing about Star Wars, and the less about them we hear in a story, the better. Andor managed to go the whole series run without a single lightsaber going brrr, and it’s the best Star Wars outside of the original trilogy.
The empire is a compelling thing to make stories about, and what Andor does well is actually make the whole thing believable. It’s not a bunch of cackling supervillains aiming to be maximally evil, like it is in so many of the movies… it’s an actually-believable thing, filled with characters with their own motivations, none of whom are explicitly evil by themselves, but through all of them evil is done. The episodes of season 1 when Andor is arrested and sent to prison are the most compelling and actually-scary depictions of the empire ever put to film. It’s just that good.
I thought Mandalorian was trash, every episode a video game fetch quest. In general I hate modern Star Wars. Andor is in a different category and totally worth it.
Unoriginal opinion: Andor is the best Star Wars TV Show/Film since Disney took over.
But, the reason it probably did so well was they let people like Christophe just make something cool instead of overly commercial.
I'd love to see VCs start funding film production like they fund video games. Maybe then we'd have a genuinely new film the quality of Andor, that was as popular as the original Star Wars instead of another thing inside of Star Wars.
Something genuinely new, there's only been remakes recently.
I just want a new universe to geek out on.
This can't be true. I'm reading all these positive accolades for Andor in this thread and there's no way I'm watching it.
Star Wars after Jedi is garbage. Lucas got me with those awful prequels and Disney got me with the first 2 new movies. I will never watch another Star Wars anything outside of the original 3 movies.
Either you never really abandon your Star Wars fandom or you're lying. There can be no other choice.
One cannot be shat upon by corporate hucksters that much and still think, "okay. I'll give 'em one more chance to shit in my eyes and ears"
Is just not possible.
I watched Andor having not watched much other Star Wars, and with vague memories of A New Hope.
I absolutely loved it. So much that I'm now watching the entirety of Star Wars film and TV in chronological order (I'm in the Clone Wars series now, before the timeline overlaps Revenge of the Sith, and I went out of sequence to watch Rogue One to see the conclusion of the cast from Andor). The full chronology can be found here[1], though I used a bit of JS to extract just the films, tv shows, and video specials as a markdown table to put in Obsidian
So as someone who can say I pretty much didn't have the context you claim is necessary to appreciate Andor, I can tell you that it 100% stands out as a masterpiece to people who are unfamiliar with the rest of the Star Wars lore.
[1]: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_canon_media
There's a lot to love, but e.g. the whole S2 arc where the Empire is provoking and covertly encouraging a rebellion on the planet they want to gut for resources - our protagonist gets a bad feeling about helping the amateur hour rebels but the amoral leader actually wants to encourage them knowing they'll likely fail.
"Think about a planet like Ghorman in rebellion. A planet of wealth and status."
"And if it goes up in flames?"
"It will burn... very brightly."
There's barely any recent popular TV or movies I can think of with the level of subtle, complex, morally grey themes Andor explored.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAJ3dUm_r2A
The only thing I can say against Andor is that it made Rogue One seem a little bit inadequate as a capstone film.
> Should I really try Andor after all the bad stuff Disney made?
Andor (at least Season 1) is very slow, boring, suffers from "static heads talking at each other" cinematography of modern movies [1], main character is just not a great actor.
All that said, it's definitely worth a watch:
- most, if not all, major characters (apart from the protagonist) are very compelling, chew through every scene they are in, and are great matches for their parts
- Empire is finally shown as a proper huge, relentless, uncaring bureaucratic machine it must have been. Run mostly by efficient ruthless bureaucrats.
- Rebels are not angels, are not a single conformist mass of do-gooders
- The dialog is mostly great
It's a much better show than Mandalorian. It's arguably the best Star Wars after the original trilogy.
[1] Most modern productions are incapable of shooting "walking and talking at the same time". Most modern movies and TV shows have actors placed against each other rigidly, with not a hint of motion, as they say their lines at each other
I'd say this is giving the Anakin trilogy an unfair shake: While I don't enjoy watching the prequels much for being clumsy films, you have to hand it to Lucas for trying to significantly expand his space opera by adding in galactical politics, etc. Any thrust to make Star Wars about ideology and governance (and specifically parliamentary democracy vs. facism) really came from the prequels, and arguably you couldn't have Andor without their template just as much as A New Hope delivers the plot hooks for its premise. In retrospect, while its flowering may be Andor, it's the prequels that gave the franchise a bigger signature and message than just being a family drama. Taken together they now make Star Wars about something, which I think it never really had before. "What's that star war about?" is something you can answer now.
It is one of the reasons I love Andor so much. Rogue One was so good that it elevated a A New Hope and Andor in turn (especially after S2) elevates Rogue One in similar fashion. The movie/show on their own are some of the greatest, but they don't limit their achievements to themselves and like a rising tide lift whoever they connect to. It is really really hard to pull that off, and people in Andor somehow managed that twice.
I finished season 2 yesterday and was actually thinking how refreshing it was that andor WASNT too dark. It has some dark scenes sure but I really it’s not nearly as bad as most shows these days
Things to love about andor.
1) the themes it explores. Things like fighting fascism has been done to death by this point, half of YA is "goverment military and bad, young girl gets a love triangle and defats them". Andor shows the slowing, encroching effect of military rule. What a prision industrial complex looks like (from fake incarcerations to unescapable sentences). What colonialism looks like (bleak pragmatic bureocracy about mineral extraction while discussing genocide over hors d'oeuvres). How political silencing happens (mothma cannot find allies because they all understand they have very limited political capital and have to be very careful were they spend it). Those are serious topics, and you basically do not see them outside of shows which care on systems like Wire on the drug police system, or House of card with the political congress system. Certainly not on star wars
2) Cinematography. The show is shot like a spy thriller from the get go. It makes sense with Gilroy previous Bourne experience but for a disney property opening up with killing 2 cops outside a brothel sets a tone not seen previously. Thats carried with every arc having instantly recognisable look and feel, from the cold harsh lights of Narkina 5, to the warm beach vibes of Niamos (space miami), the future vibe of corusant or the jungle vibe of Yanvin 4.
3) Monologues. Most shows cant pull off one monologue without it looking awful, this show manages plenty of them, sometimes in the same episode.
4) The topics its willing to address. I mentioned themes before, but those themes can be explored in many ways. Prequels dealt with growing fascism in the republic then turned empire, but it wouldnt say genocide or have a isb officer talk about how annoying it is the army wants their interrogation techniques because their torture works so well. Or show insignificant middle managers so untouchable they attempt to rap* a main character. Saying the empire is very powerful and scary is one thing, showing how they behave with that power is way more chilling.
5) The carnival of interesting people explored. Most shows have a few main characters and then supporting characters whose mission is to not have a personality and be a plot device of some kind. Here outside of the incredible inner life of even minor characters you get to see the journey of peopel as varied as Andor, a colonial genocide survivor who was a petty thief and became a high ranking member of the rebellion. Luthen, an ex empire soldier who after crumbling on a mission rescues Kleya and becomes one of the leaders of the rebellion from within Corusant, sort of batman/bruce wayne. Vel, a nepo baby from Chandrilla who joins the rebellion. Syril, a dadless little shit who is obssesed with following the rules thinking he would get far inside the empire system. Dedra, an orphan that cares so much about results she might be actually responsible for the fall of the empire. Kleya, another genocide survivor, taken in by Luthen and basically nightwing to his batman. Like whether you like womanly women, or tomboy super killers and whether you like manly rebels who dont follow the rules to super organised overachiever you can find a character with an entire arc in andor for you.
I could keep going but honestly its just a great show. From ideas like making 3 episode arcs, to how well it ties into Rogue one I think there is so much to praise there
They did a really good job tying Andor into Rogue One, but yeah Andor is just far better in terms of pacing, etc. And because they have to rush the plot in R1 (meet Jyn, she doesn't care about the rebellion, oops never mind now she's leading the rebellion) it ends up seeming much shallower emotionally. They also seemed to have to have a bit of fan service.
Rogue One was my favourite Star Wars production before Andor, now I wish they could throw it away and remake it as Andor Season 3. It deserves to be told in full.
I thought it worked in the original trilogy because it was much more subtle, but still powerful. You watch Luke struggle to harness it over the span of 3 movies.
In the recent Disney movies (Andor being the exception) it’s like they gave everyone the force, everyone is a super hero, it’s bombastic and annoying.
I would recommend Skeleton Crew. Its def aimed at younger crows but if you have nieces/nephews or kids of your own its a delight.
Basically treasure Island/ goonies in space, it is campier than Andor but does what it aims for amazingly. Cause andor can get quite heavy on the fighting fascism and sometimes finding a treasure map is more the vibe than seeing holocaust planning meetings
I didnt watch anything mandalorian past season 2, never watched boba fet, obiwan or ahsoka because I thought it would be Dave Filoni getting action figures and bumping them together, and friends who watched them agree with my intuition. But yeah of the new star wars stuff Andor and Skeleton Crew are both amazing in very different ways
I don't get what people love about Andor. The prison break episode was good but the flashbacks to the kids in the jungle were horrible and the funeral with instruments straight out of Fat Albert's junkyard band were laughable.
It's again amazing A New Hope was as good as it was, given the budget, inexperience, and writing. But the ideas were brilliant, and Lucas' vision was unparalleled. And Andor is great because it had the budget and the writing to actually live up to that original vision. Empire is so good precisely because Lucas had the money to live up to it and really fill out the world. And the vision just exploded from there with the Expanded Universe. It's now a science fiction franchise that is much larger than the original Foundation novels it was based upon, and much larger than pretty much anything excepting Star Trek and maybe Marvel, at least in TV and film. There are quite literally hundreds of stories they could tell if the fans are still there.
For those people who loved Andor and its approach to the Empire and fascism, I have a book recommendation: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Chris Kempshall. It's written as history (not a novel) with the author being an in-universe scholar who originally focused on Jedi antiquities but decided to write a general history of the Empire.
Ties in well with Andor as the book discusses, realistically, how the rot set in with the Republic. How it could be transformed into the Empire with little initial protest. How the Empire sustained itself via a mix of military control, propaganda, and moving towards making the population feel helpless and thus apolitical. And how the blind sides of a rigid, fascist system led to the Rebellion winning despite the huge power disparity.
It's the perfect companion book for the series. And is a good introductory book on how authoritarianism takes hold, how the insurgents can exploit weaknesses, and what should be done, post-rebellion, to keep the fascists from returning. I think many people, who otherwise would not be obsessive about Star Wars lore, would find it interesting.
On a side note: the book does address the events of Abrams sequel trilogy with an interesting angle. That the New Republic essentially didn't do enough de-Nazification and that led to their downfall. This approach to those terrible movies doesn't entirely succeed, but does make them a little more interesting. And matches what we've seen in real life reconstructions after the downfall of various regimes.
While you can't dismiss New Hope as it was just breathtaking at the time of its release, Empire Strikes Back was arguably peak, and you needed to wrap it up with the third movie, there's a good argument that Rogue One was the second best film after Empire. And probably Andor as a series after that. Unlike a lot of people I don't mind series wrapping up after a season or two. Even in the best cases I'm starting to lose interest by season five in a lot of cases.
(I think the prequels were worse than the sequels but they're collectively pretty unmemorable.)
And this is exactly where I disagree. Andor does not stand very well on its own outside of SW (and that takes it from great tier to very good for me with the other minor squibbles that I have). If you don't know the lore, things will be less clear and the writing will feel strange at times. FWIW, I have recommended this show to many friends who never watched anything SW, they mostly liked it but found some things odd.
WARNING, SPOILERS
The story is not properly resolved. If you have no SW knowledge, the threat isn't even very clear. Some galaxy government lead by an emperor is building a weapon, shown once. If S2 is the end it's pretty unsatisfying in general. The politics are kind of unclear.
The sacrifice of Mothma is very unclear without a SW background. A senator said something and had to flee to a planet (oversimplified).
Without knowledge of R1, the killing machine super droid is down right comical/a sloppy resolve for things.
Without SW knowledge the (imo) best part of the Imperial machinery, bureaucracy, power hunger also becomes awkward at times and frankly less interesting. Syril is my favorite character and Dedra probably second. I found their arcs great, every single non-SW viewer I talked to found them "boring", "that guy with the annoying mother was strange" and "why did they have to be a couple, that's pretty unimaginative writing" etc.
END SPOILERS
My personal quibbles are that the crashed tie episode was pretty bad filler. I have not heard anyone say anything good about it.
Someone else already mentioned minor technical problems (field scene).
I found Diego Luna's acting ok but not great. It felt wooden at times. To some extend that's subjective but it doesn't compare to the lead acting I have in my personal top tier (Breaking Bad for example)
I'm on both sides of the fence with early Mandalorian. I need to watch it again until it jumps the shark because I don't know how early it did that.
The latter episodes were incredibly laboured, with the narrative being spelt out, as if to a child, by various characters. I think it may have always been like that, but the look and feel overwhelmed the ridiculous dialogue for a while.
If they were more clever with the body language of the main character, then the others wouldn't have had to carry the direction of the storyline so heavily verbally. Again, I think this was done well early, but kinda lost in the desperation for grogu storyline and screen time cuteness.
I'd have to watch it again, and right now it ain't worth the time.
Haven't seen Andor, but now it's "on the list".
My point was to make that distinction between an masterpiece and an epic while still showing that Andor holds up against some of the most celebrated epics ever created. Comparing it to My Cousin Vinny is ridiculous. You should be comparing it to other works in the same form, other epic hero's journeys.
Was your gripe about superfluous scenes, where you mentioned the forest planet, a reference to the first few episodes of season 2? That forest plant is Yavin IV, the plant where the rebels eventually build their first base, and those rebels are some of the first recruits to the rebel army. I believe those scenes were intended to show how the rebellion lacked leadership and how Andor and others had to step up to provide that leadership.
Loved Andor. Unlikely Gilroy would do more Star Wars and if he did, he probably wouldn’t be given another $650M for a side character. Season 2 was $290 and that was after their budget was capped by Iger, they tried to spend more.
Source: https://screenrant.com/andor-budget-confirmed/
I agree. Especially in the originals, everything just sort of “works out” for the protagonist(s). The bad guys don’t aim well, fly well or really do anything great. And that’s fine because that is era of cinema Star Wars came from. In Andor the empire is smart, calculated, deadly and just plain scary—nearly to a visceral degree, if you allow yourself to be absorbed into the story.
And despite how good Andor (and Rogue One fits here as well) was, I think there’s some merit to wanting to go see a film that makes you feel good. There are certain films and books I won’t put myself through (especially fiction) more than once because I don’t want something ultimately meaningless adding stress to my life. It’s supposed to be an enjoyable escape. So Andor/Rogue One come pretty close to that point for me.
Someone who appreciates Andor should find it easy to forget Ep7 entirely or understand that it was just a reboot remake alternate history, not "canon".
The Force part was hamfisted. It was clear that they were trying to avoid "midochlorians" but didn't know how it handle it, and didn't spend any time to develop it organically. It felt more like highbrow fanservice connecting Cassian to Luke. It's similar to the Kleya hospital/flashback episode, which could well have been its own 3 episode arc and gotten time to breathe like the S1 prison arc. Since they cut the project down to be 4 3-episode mini seasons after S1, instead of 6+ episodes each, they rushed some story arcs and sublots that end up just being presented as bullet points.
Andor + Rogue one are my favourites from the franchise. It tells a story that the 50 year olds that grew up with SW can appreciate for its depth and intrigue as well as connection to the original films, but leaving the hallowed originals mostly alone.
I wish the crew behind it would be allowed to continue the story until the fall of the emperor, so we could get the whole "rise and fall of the empire" story told with the same quality, depth and overall "tone" for lack of a better word.
Three more seasons taking place during the same time as the original trilogy would be nice, but of course keeping the Skywalker and Jedi stuff mostly in the background.
A similar show as Andor with storylines taking place on Alderaan and the construction site of the death star, say.
> I would say that there is not a single scene that can be removed from these movies without negatively impacting the story/theme/narrative.
Appropriating Saint Exupéryian (et al.) notions regarding the unattainable (perfection) to judge an artwork is a sucker's bet to me.
And in the cited works I rate as cinematic masterpieces scene editing (e. g. removal) is most certainly possible without having a negative impact on your criteria, but that is a completely moot point anyways.
With regards to Andor's forest arc: It is, amongst other things that are most certainly more appreciated by a specific set of people, a very interesting mediation on time and the notion "where there's competence, there's always also incompetence", often manifesting in very comical and surreal ways.
It's the opposite for me. I could not be more burnt out on StarWars, when they introduced the force in season 2 I rolled my eyes and it somewhat took me out of it. The main downside of watching Andor is that you have your brain nagging you about eposide 7 making everything that you are watching pointless (the new republic is obliterated after 20-30 years).
I have friends that I can't convince to watch it because they are just too done with that universe in general.
But that's the thing, Andor could be outside of StarWars and just its own thing because the world building that it does on its own is excellent, the premise (empire vs rebellion/revolutionaries) is mostly intemporal.
Andor is a huge middle finger for everything that came after the original trilogy. It manages to be menacing and showing a convincing rebellion against realistic fascism - relying heavily on the tones of the old films - without any of the dumb Jedi magic, light sabers andd mystic blabble.
To address this interview specifically, rather than just gushing about how great Andor is--
One point Nuyens makes in a few different ways is that they used a variety of tools and techniques at every stage. People often have simplistic, extreme viewpoints like "modern CGI can do anything" or "CGI looks fake and weightless, practical effects are better". But here's somebody with a big part in making a fantastic-looking show, who very explicitly embraces multiple approaches. Massive real sets with CGI enhancements; sometimes green screens, sometimes old-fashioned backdrop paintings, sometimes LED screens. It sounds like close collaboration between teams in different areas was key, like the VFX team working with the production designer from the start. "Some shots started VFX and then became sets."
It sounds like a big success for an artisanal approach, where every element is a bespoke construction by cross-functional experts, versus a modular approach where each team has a position in the workflow with well-defined inputs and outputs.
But maybe it's not worth the time and money, and the "worse is better" approach wins out? I hope not, or least I hope we get more shows aspiring to be as good as this.
On a smaller scale, interesting to hear how much equipment on a high-end film set is now wireless. That must be a massive change from just a few years ago, where you'd have had massive cables snaking everywhere.
Andor is a very good TV show, but it's obviously getting extra appreciation because it's part of a beloved but increasingly exhausted franchise.
"You guys are excluding the George Lucas movies from discussion right?"
We are not. Andor is the best Star Wars ever made, full stop. IMHO, it surpasses, by far, anything Lucas ever did.
I think with nostalgia goggles and appreciation for what it was at the time, the originals are great, but in retrospect I don't think the original movies are that great. The story is very compelling and fun but across basically all other dimensions Andor is just higher-quality.
I think Andor is a bit over hyped in this threat. I absolutely love it (especially the Imperial side of things) but saying it is better than the original movies is a bit too much. If you take into account the time and technical possibilities it's not even close. And the original movies have more memorable things overall. I mean the two villains alone are all time greats. The music is also better (imo).
But most importantly, I think Andor is less strong without the original movies. The looming threat and the Mothma high-society scenes become a lot less powerful. Same for the insights into the Imperial machine. And even the meaning of the Rebellion itself. I'd argue while technically great, well written etc. without the SW backdrop the storytelling suffers quite a bit.
> Should I really try Andor after all the bad stuff Disney made?
It's difficult to articulate Andor's quality to someone who hasn't seen it & is framing it in the context of things like Mandalorian. I can't stress enough that it's absolutely not just a "better" tv show than Mandalorian, &c. Not only is that an understatement, but it's also a fundamentally different beast to those shows. It's in a different category of quality.
The only Star Wars worth watching as an adult is Andor.
I don’t know, I still really value the original trilogy. It’s just very, very different in some crucial ways.
One aspect that’s really striking when you see Andor is how little the Jedi and the Force have to do with it; which highlights how central they are to the original trilogy. (Rogue One does a pretty deft job of bridging those worlds, eg with Donnie Yen’s character.)
And the Force was a big part of the charm of the original movies, right? All the scenes with Luke and Yoda are wonderful, for example. I wouldn’t want to take that away, any more than I’d want to shoehorn the Jedi into Andor.
I think the real problem with the original movies starts with the prequels, which doubled down on all the Jedi business but managed to make it feel very pedestrian, rather than mystical.
The sequel movies could have been great if they had really tried to explore the collapse of the Empire and what the reconstruction would look like, rather than shamelessly retreading everything beat-for-beat. The Last Jedi did at least try to be different, but its ideas were completely scattershot and (I think) not very fruitful.
You guys are excluding the George Lucas movies from discussion right?
In my opinion nothing ever came even close and I gave up on SW after the second Kylo Ren movie. Rouge one was cool though, also first episodes of Mandalorian..
Should I really try Andor after all the bad stuff Disney made?
A few days ago I watched the new LILO and Stitch and that was great, so maybe good people still work at Disney …
Andor is by far the best Star Wars. Rogue One is very good, and the only movie that's in the same league as the originals, but Andor is so much better.
I don't think we'll see anything on the same level as Andor again; they already cut the original plans from 5 seasons to 2; it's simply too expensive and costs too much time to do it this well. But I do hope that future Star Wars shows will try to follow at least some aspects of its example: better writing, more human stories, focus on core themes, not on fan service or milking established characters.
Of course production values will be lower, but I can live with that if they get the other stuff right.
It makes me wish it were the actual start of the franchise and then they made Rogue One and the trilogy de novo. In that counterfactual I think there's a good shot it'd be far better than the originals, and the Star Wars story would be considered not just a classic but a masterpiece. (I don't think the original trilogy is bad exactly, but the trilogy with the Andor look/feel/style/writing/acting could've been some of the best films ever.)
I watched it for the first time immediately after finishing Andor. Definitely better than the other Star Wars films but definitely not as good as Andor. (I'm aware the showrunner of Andor co-wrote Rogue One, but Andor really seems like a different tier.)
Yes, a Rogue One sequel movie. So it'll be a continuation of the Andor series.
They really take their time filming this kinda stuff so don't hold your breath.
If you haven't watched Andor and you are at all open to sci-fi then I would urge you to consider giving a go. The writing, acting, and cinematography are all excellent, and IMO it is a very strong contender for the best TV show released in the last few years.
Andor is a masterpiece. I recommend everyone to see it. Season 1 is probably the best, but season 2 just continues the brilliance. Unfortunately there won't be a season 3 though - they're making a final movie.
The cinematography, editing, writing, and overall feel of this show far exceed any Star Wars movie I've seen. I had long since written off the Star Wars franchise as a shameless cash grab since the original movies but they proved they could do something cool with it.
I'd definitely watch a new movie if it were handled by the same team that made Andor. Prequel, sequel, side story, or re-telling of the originals.
Fantastic. Andor recently passed Expanse,Galactica and Babylon 5 as my favorite SF series. The way I describe it is what we should have gotten in the prequels. As a kid I always imagined that the prequels would be the fall of Rome. What we got instead was a reflection of George Lucas’s monetization of Star Wars - purple lightsabers, yippee and Jar Jar.
There was no way to “earn” the payoff with Vader so they masked it over with massacring children and one of the worst romance screen in (then nascent) digital film history.
At the end of Andor, nothing felt unearned. For film folks there were jaw dropping moments, and for history geeks, gasp out loud moments (my favorite being half-track and Wannasee callbacks in not so subtle Star Wars allegory).
Andor is good enough that it makes its sequels better:
https://youtu.be/qzny45Zk05c?si=0fMi8YKgHOPfKV62
Im the complete opposite and never watch anything that is on-going because I hate waiting around for every episode and having series drawn out over months. And even after they have completed there is usually little fanfare or noticed that a season is complete and so it is only a 50% chance I will watch it at all even if I am interested in it because all the talk about it has since died and it is forgotten about because it was going on for months already.
I didn't mind what Andor did as much though for season 2 releasing 3 episodes at a time. If it had just been 1 episode at a time I probably wouldn't have seen it until a year or two from now after all discussion was dead.
Yeah, kind of what Lower Decks (the show, and for that matter also the episode "Lower Decks") is to Star Trek, but not comedy. Andor is indeed the closest I know of to that, though you see little touches of similar things in some episodes of The Mandalorian and the Clone Wars cartoon (though of course that one's also full of the "magical beings")
I have always desperately wanted a Star Wars movie that is essentially nothing more than Master and Commander.
No magical beings, no one-in-a-trillion mega-celebrities. Just professionals doing their jobs within the Navy and the adventures they had as mortal, skilled, men.
What are the TIE Pilots talking about off-shift, how does the Captain feel about the new mission priorities?
Andor is closest we've had to seeing this POV.
Yep, and S1E7: https://moviemaps.org/episodes/9c8
I was reading this post and thinking, huh, this would be a good set for a Coruscant shot in Andor, and sure enough ...
Wasn't there a whole storyline about rebels starving in that episode of Andor?
I do not agree w/ this in relation to the Dark Crystal series. But I see parallels in the Star Wars series Andor. Many will skip it because 'it's star wars', but it's a great series in star wars costume. The three people I've pressed into watching it came away with very favorable reviews.
There are some kinda deep cut star wars references that non-fans will miss. Mon Mothma the political head of the rebellion is seen only sparingly in the original trilogy and in rogue one (scenes were shot for her in the prequels setting her up as politically aligned with Padme and Bail, but they were cut) is a main character here. Other characters like Saw Gererra only appear in the clone wars series and Rogue One (a film for which this series is a prequel). However this didn't seem to effect my friends much only one of whom had even seen rogue one and the prequels, the other two only having seen the original series.
I'm so glad that it got a second season and am very excited to see it play out.
I see a lot of shade thrown at Kathleen Kennedy these days. Sure, some of the Star Wars movies under Disney haven't been great, but look at this resume. It's incredible. I'll save you the click and put some things she's been the executive producer of here: Poltergeist, E.T., IJ & Temple of Doom, Goonies, Back to the Future(I,II,III), Young Sherlock Holmes, The Money Pit, Empire of the Sun, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (jumping ahead to more recent stuff), Rogue One, Andor, Mandalorian, Ashoka, Skeleton Crew....
So yes, not everything has been a winner, but to say that having her name attached to something means it won't be good means that either A)you might not be informed about her resume or B)you have another reason you don't like her involvement with a project.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005086/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_0_nm_8_in_0_q_kathleen%2520kenedy
I liked Andor a lot too, because of the mundane, the prison/cruelty, the guerilla-like warfare, and betrayal.
The mundane existed in episode 4 as well, at least at the beginning.
I enjoyed Rogue One, they took a unexplored slice of the story after the legends thing and created this self contained, well written journey of a group that is only mentioned in the 4th episode.
Takin may have felt a bit off (uncanny valley), but I think it was a good choice to have him included in the story nonetheless. I like the cold, unhinged personality of this character; I've grown used to Peter Cushing's acting and facial features.
I feel like, there should be more exploration of Star Wars in the aspect of "mundane" life, like it's done in Andor. There's a big universe already established. Andor really helped me understand 2 things of SW universe: the oppression which built up the motivation for Cassian to join the Rebels, and, effectiveness of the Empire, specifically the ISB. God, the exchange between Daedra Meero and Blevin, with an added mediation of the cunning Major Partagaz was excellent. Reminded me of the discussion in Jurassic Park about ethics.
I think it becomes intrusive into the storytelling when it becomes a constant chain of "and then yet another, even crazier thing happened to this one character". Especially when the character started as an everyman.
It's a problem many book series have - one character keeps being the centre of the universe and surviving insurmountable odds repeatedly to the point of incredulity and usually the ante keeps ratcheting up as well so your original ordinary-human character ends up with some kind of godlike powers.
To me, Harry Potter is actually fairly good in this regard, as the character development is at least not utterly unlike 11-18 year olds at school during the re-outbreak of a traumatic civil war, and from the start, there's a clear, in-universe reason why the main character is always the one near the action in the depicted timeframe.
Star Wars did this quite well originally ("why is this rando farmhand at the centre, oh, cool, that's why"). The prequels did a little worse ("here's how the farmhand's father got to the centre, ok well maybe it's awfully convenient the ship broke down right there and a simple blood test reveals The One, but ok") and the recent films rather worse ("these people are at the centre...how? Why? Genetic predestination?"). Notably, the less you explain the Force, the easier it is to keep the story believable and consistent. Again, Harry Potter's vagueness over the specifics of magic helps it.
Something that seems to be getting more common, though it's not new, as series lengthen in real-world time is to do a Star Trek: TNG and start an in-universe subseries where you can have things happen to someone else entirely for a change, but as part of the overall universe's story. It can be tricky if the universe is very predicated on one person, like Harry Potter is. Star Wars has not done well at this, but have tried. I think they keep trying to bootstrap interest from existing fans by character reuse, but the better series like Andor pick a whole new story to tell.
Iain M. Banks was especially good at this and didn't even really have a main narrative, as he'd hop all over the Culture in time and space so you could have the cool stuff happen that he wanted to show the reader, but didn't need to keep powering-up one person (or ship) endlessly. But space opera has the advantage that you can just go and be somewhere and somewhen else very easily. It's a bit harder if you need the subseries to be nearby without constantly dragging the other main characters in, especially when they're further along their upgrade path as you need to explain why they don't just pick up the phone, pop round and stomp the "mortal threat" flat and it's another kind of deus ex machina. Doubly so if the threat is very obvious and world-ending, because surely they'd turn up to that!
I am glad the Wookieepedia exists, but every time I open it I feel like I am reading about some foreign sci-fi universe. I have watched every mainline Star Wars movie and the new popular shows (The Mandalorian, Andor), but feel like I only recognize maybe 20% of the characters and plotline referenced in the wiki.
Either this is my own ignorance, or the universe is super deep outside of the most popular content. Probably both.
I feel this last paragraph accidentally explains it all
> Please understand, gentle reader, I am all for creating hassles and headaches for the Empire. I just doubt that the Empire would have created so many for itself.
The world of the empire in the 9 films seems orderly and well orchestrated. The version seen via Andor is more like what a real authoritarian technocracy would likely operate like. It strives more for the appearance of competency and control than actual positive results. The reason for this thing? Someone assumed it should be there, so it was.
Mando and Andor finally got it. Or, more accurately, they knew what the rest of us did, that the purpose of the medium - any medium - is to tell a story. The finbros and Disney people, not being normal humans, are (hopefully, were) trying to deliver a Star Wars experience. Yeah, whatever the hell that means (anytime my job description has the word "Experience" in it, that's almost always a red flag).
Did MCU not teach you anything, Disney? "Hey, I got a great idea for a Western . ." bam! Logan. "Do you know, what if we had like a cold war paranoia spy movie and . ." bam! Winter Solider. "Dang, so if you have a heist movie, but the twist is we have a shrink ray and . . "bam! Ant-Man. Tie all of 'em up with a McGuffin, a Big Bad, and, ding, instant cinematic universe. See what we did there? We made stories first. It's also, incidentally, what the great Star Wars video games did as well. Even the not-so-great; the elite storm trooper who loses her faith is frickin' amazing (damn, Finn got robbed, screenplay-wise . . also, again, his character does not need to exist . . goddammit, stop wasting my time, Finbro Disney People!).
Probably "Don't Waste Anyone's Time" is a good one sentence screenwriting lesson.
Anyhoosit. Enough grousing from this old fart.
I agree with most you have to say, personally I think the only movie that really holds weight since Disney took over is rogue One. andor is a good watch too. the mandalorian is great as well.
Reading Characters and Viewpoint by Orson S. Card and one of the main thing is that characters should answer these three points:
* Why should I care?
* Why is he doing that?
* What is happening?
IMO, most movies focus on the last one and not on the two first. They expect us to believe the answer for the first is our love for the universe and the second is "heroes good, villains bad". Which makes for a very bland story. I watched The Marvels and the most interesting thing was the sound in the theater (Dolby Audio). But I've done an all-nighter for Andor and watched it again the day after because:
1. Everyone had serious motivations which you discover during the show.
2. It was not a fairy tale
3. The story was clear and beautifylly put together.
These days, I prefer having my own curated collection that I can rewatch every now and then and add the few good things that come each year.
I have no idea who is personally responsible, but the idea that you can only tell stories about boring Jedi with no personality and Tatooine is just a massive failure of imagination.
There's a whole rich universe of EU novels exploring a wide variety of stories. Timothy Zahn wrote an Ocean's Eleven heist story in "Scoundrels". Andor was universally praised, partly because it's doing something completely different. Even the currently ongoing High Republic books are pretty good and nothing like the movies. Star Wars is a whole science fiction galaxy, it's as big or small as a writer wants it to be.
Andor was amazing for a Star Wars show.
It was barely average as a tv show.
Guess I am forever spoiled by The Expanse. Or just old and cranky, too.
Meanwhile I loved Clone Wars & Rebels, as well as Rogue One. Thus I'm digging shows like Ahsoka & Andor. I'm less excited about the shows tied to the main movies like Boba Fett & Kenobi.
I want to say this as kindly as possible, but if you wonder why consumers desire new content then I'd have to wonder how varied is your film and TV taste.
Times change, genres evolve and twist and become something new. Spaghetti Westerns blew up and had a mass craze, then died off. Weird westerns gained momentum and survived to this day. Film depictions of what the future looks like will be vastly different in the 60s/70s versus how it is today. Modern shows like Andor show that aspect of retrofuturism mixed with modern designs. Animation was mostly restricted to childrens work in comparison to today where you have things like Scavanger's Reign.
This is without talking about the change in attitudes towards various minority groups.
I strongly agree on all counts. Overall, the bad outweighed the good for me; but at least it tried and I give it points for that. The other two sequels were just lazy.
The best modern Star Wars movie by far was Rogue One. In some ways Rogue One had an easier job because it was explicitly an exercise in elaborating on the original movies, rather than trying to expand in a brand new direction. But it did its job tremendously well. (And the TV show Andor is taking things in cool new directions.)
Eh, I mean it's hard to say if there's any correlation between bad movies and progressive movies. Some of the best movies recently are progressive (everything everywhere all at once, barbie). Some recent shows from Disney are terrific too (Andor).
Some terrible shows aren't progressive at all.
There are definitely cases that people morally blame audiences as a false cover for a bad movie, but there are also people who can't enjoy great movies if they can find any progressive meaning in them and make a career about ranting about it.
It’s the inevitable consequence of design by committee.
By layering on requirements unrelated to “fun”, eventually fun becomes incompatible with all the different needs and wants.
“Must cater to lucrative Chinese market.”
“Must have at least one of each race represented — even if they’re a single family from one village.”
Etc… eventually the singular vision is just one of many items on a long checklist.
The only good new Disney show is Andor, which was notably made by a small team with a small budget and hence little interference from “corporate”.
Thinking about it, all of the media I’ve enjoyed in the last decade — my middle age — were made with a single “dictator” in charge instead of a committee in charge. E.g.: I like Christopher Nolan or Ridley Scott movies precisely because their personal vision and style is apparent and beautiful.
Corporate committees have only one vision: taking your money.
That’s what comes through. That’s what you’re picking up on subconsciously.
Fair enough. There were a number of things that didn't jive with me about the film as I watched it: the fight choreography was meh, Luke's behavior given his previous characterization, Rey's almost complete lack of actual character development, and of course Admiral Holdo being portrayed as a wise leader by the filmmakers, but when you look at her actual actions and the consequences of them, it's unclear if a leader could be less competent.
The Luke thing was the only one of those that really bugged me though.
However, the moment I walked out of the cinema and the spectacle faded and I thought about the implications of certain other things in the film, the less happy I was.
For example, a ship going lightspeed was used as a weapon in TLJ. The implications of this are pretty huge. Shooting lasers around in a universe where you can apparently have kinetic lightspeed weapons is dumb. If treated as canon, TLJ makes every other space battle in Star Wars nonsense.
Similarly, I would say in Star Wars up until TLJ, it was somewhat clear (to me at least) that space in Star Wars is not a vacuum, but more of an "ether". People get out of their spaceships on small asteroids without any sort of vac-suit and breathe fine. Sound propagates during space battles. Spaceships (their engines, their ability to open/close, etc) seem to operate in approximately the same way on a planet as they do in space. So when they used Leia's first onscreen usage of the Force (which is actually a whole 'nother thing) to totally break that system and treat outer space in Star Wars as if it's what we experience in our universe, it kinda sucked. And all for the sake of a "she's dead, actually she's not" gotcha thing.
In summary, Rian Johnson explicitly said one of his goals when making the film was to "subvert expectations". But I think there is a huge difference between "subverting expectations" and "indiscriminately shitting on existing canon", and he was definitely just doing more of the latter. Yes, it is very easy to "surprise" people when you make characters do things that they have no reason to do from previous character development and when you ignore the laws of physics (or lack thereof) that had previously been established.
In summary: Rogue One is the only Disney Star Wars film I would save from a fire. Though I also greatly enjoyed "Andor".
You took the time to write out a thoughtful reply so I'll respond, even though this article and thread is long in the past.
I'm not sure what FOSS has to do with any of this, so I'll leave that be. For The Godfather, obviously what counts as Great Art is subjective. I think the idea of greatness can change as the public's norms/values change over time. A lot of people look back at classic movies from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and say "Yea that was a great movie for its time, but measured using today's moral yardstick--yow! Some of that stuff is actually not so good."
If The Godfather was made today, who could say whether the cast and crew would be more diverse? It probably would be, at least the crew. Would that make it any better or worse a film? There's no way to know. Maybe the creative leadership positions, financiers, and distribution companies would be more diverse. Would that make it a better or worse movie? Would The Godfather somehow not have been able to show truth about the human condition if its executive producer was black?
Times have changed. "Ticking DEI checkboxes" as you put it, should not be difficult--or even something a studio has to consciously think about. If you're a business or studio and are up all night sweating bullets about "Oh lord how am I going to tick DEI checkboxes," you're doing something fundamentally very, very, very wrong in your business. Your point about Andor supports this: A studio can easily do this (respect the norms of today) and still make a great movie!
Let's use a less contentious topic: FOSS vs proprietary software. There is a common sentiment I've seen on HN that FOSS is superior to proprietary software, and all else being equal, I agree with that sentiment. However, in reality, not all else is equal. Some proprietary software is just better at solving certain problems than FOSS equivalents – maybe the proprietary software is more reliable or has a better UX or is more regularly maintained or has more features a user wants or differs along a host of other dimensions. Thus, if someone makes a categorical claim that all FOSS software is superior to similar proprietary software, we would regard that comment as propaganda. This doesn't mean that FOSS software is bad or that good FOSS software can't be created or that no one should try to create excellent FOSS software.
This is an analogy or what I mean by "political correctness" (or related concepts like "wokeness" and "social justice warrior"). Great art communicates truth about the human condition in a beautiful way. This is, of course, open to interpretation, yet somehow many people agree that, for example, The Godfather is a great film. Why? I believe the film shows us some truth about the human condition (particularly our ability to descend into evil) through a gripping story with excellent characters, visuals, dialogue, plotting, etc.
When we substitute an arbitrary checklist of criteria a film must meet that have nothing to do with communicating truth about the human condition in a beautiful way, we are engaging in "political correctness," and we have ceased to value art but instead propaganda. For instance, if we were to use the new Academy standards for Oscar-nominated movies, the Godfather would fail – the cast is almost all white, has no LGBT and IIRC includes the n-word. Amadeus, another excellent film (one of the most praised in Oscar history) would certainly fail, since the cast is all white and almost entirely male, as we would expect from a film set in 18th century Vienna. This does not mean great art cannot have diverse casts, LGBT characters or a lack of "problematic" content. For a recent example, the excellent show Andor ticks almost all of the DEI checkboxes – LGBT character(s), diverse cast –, but it also has smart writing, interesting characters, sensible plots, beautiful visuals and a compelling story. As long as the former are subordinated to the latter, a work remains art and not "politically correct" propaganda. At the same time, Oppenheimer ticks almost none of the DEI checkboxes and yet is arguably one of the best films of this century.
> So instead of using a meaningless euphemism, OP should articulate what exact themes, stories, or characters they think lead to a good critic score?
I think this comment betrays exactly what I'm critiquing. Great art can't be shoved in a box like this. Mediocre art has identifiable flaws - maybe it's visually bland or maybe the dialogue is poor or the characters act in inexplicable ways. These all detract from the beauty and truth of the work.
> Hollywood’s CEOs are suffering. Not primarily from labor disputes or industry disruption or public-relations issues, but from vincible ignorance, which seems to be endemic in C-suites of all industries. Under pressure to deliver to Wall Street, too many CEOs have lost the plot of their own movie. They are not running companies to profitably deliver a good product, such as a book or a cup of coffee or, in this case, a movie or TV show. They are running companies to deliver good profit. The quality of their product has ceased to matter.
Has there ever been a time when the suits weren't ignoramuses? And if they're optimizing everything to deliver a profit, why aren't they profitable?
The suits are to blame in terms of accountability, because the buck stops with them. But the product as far as I can tell has never been more expensive. The new Indiana Jones movie had a production budget of approximately $300M, plus marketing costs (between $50M & $150M). If we assume Disney will pocket 50% of the gross box office, they'd need to make $700M-900M just to break even. So far, more than two weeks after release, the film has made just over $300M worldwide.[0] That movie alone is very likely to lose hundreds of millions. Movies losing money is the norm, but not to the tune of hundreds of millions.
What's gone wrong? 1) The writing has deteriorated. Stories have become boring & tendentious, filled with unlikeable characters, hackneyed plots and preachy dialogue. 2) The studios have become completely risk-averse. I can kind of understand why they'd want to be risk averse with budgets of $300M, but audiences tire of remakes, reboots and distant sequels. (I think the creative types have gotten wise, which is why "explorable" IP with large worlds like Star Wars or Middle-Earth have been cannibalized to tell stories that are tonally and thematically quite different than the source material, because the suits have zero clue. Sometimes it even works, like with Andor. Though even Andor has struggled to find its audience amongst all of the noise.) 3) The costs have gotten too high. I'm not sure if the streaming wars or golden age of TV or even just low interest rates are responsible, but the costs of production are staggering. This is in a day and age where technology should have made it cheaper to produce films & TV. When I look at Oppenheimer's budget of $100M, I can almost understand why it is so expensive. I can't explain the Indy 5 budget.
When I was younger, I could almost always find a movie I wanted to watch on a Friday night. Those days are long gone. At some point, Hollywood stopped producing anything worth seeing, and now they're paying the price.
[0]https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl2776598017/?ref_=bo_hm_rd
I agree Andor was great - I genuinely found myself on the edge of my seat once or twice watching it. But one decent TV show out of several, and no new movies in years? Terrible performance.
Andor was actually very nice surprise to me. Only SW show that is not just casual "go there do this".
9th episode has best space "battle" I ever saw in cinema.
> Andor ... severance all can achieve incredible results without hollywood budgets
Severance S2 reportedly costs $15–20 million per episode to make, and Apple+'s average original series budget is ~$10M/ep.: https://www.gq.com/story/severance-season-2-delayed-behind-the-scenes-drama
Andor S1's budget was reportedly $250M for 12 episodes ($20.8M/ep): https://www.ign.com/articles/andor-season-1-reported-budget-250-million
Which is more expensive than the combined budgets for The Mandalorian S1 and the upcoming Skeleton Crew S1. Tony Gilroy outright said:
“We got lucky making this during the gold rush a few years ago. A lot of people now have cold feet, and you can’t do this show inexpensively.”
https://fandomwire.com/we-got-lucky-you-cant-do-this-show-inexpensively-andor-beats-pedro-pascals-the-mandalorian-as-most-expensive-star-wars-show-ever-made-with-250m-budget/
> We're going to look back on the era of prestige TV fondly.
I don't think prestige TV is necesirely expensive though.
The wire, breaking bad, Andor, the bear, severance all can achieve incredible results without hollywood budgets.
If anything big budgets have not translated into quality, see GoT, Rings of Power, Stranger Things all getting worse the more moeny thrown at them.
prestigue tv is about talent, and having longer story lines, it just allows for more character work than a movie, but not because of that does it have to cost exponentially more.
Yes. In many cases, it is the ideology that forces the bad story.
In the last two movies, all the men had to fail, the ideological bent to the story required it. That's why we got Luke as a failure, Han Solo as a failure (he couldn't redeem his son, only Rey could through the power of ambiguity), and Finn as a failure.
Imagine if Finn had succeeded in his sacrifice. How powerful would that moment have been?
Instead the story we get is one where morality is an old fashioned idea. Hard work and merit (Jedi training) are "the old rules that are holding you back." We get the whole "there's no good and evil, there's just power." All of which fly in the face of the original world of Star Wars. Patience, self-control, and practice were virtues. Anger, impulsiveness, and fear led to hatred, evil, and suffering -- the Dark Side.
Rey can't be trained, because it would mean a man was training her. Leia can just develop Force powers on her own, because otherwise, she would have had to learn them from a man. Poe Dameron can't have a proper perspective on the battle or be trusted with any plans because the point of his character must be "toxic masculinity."
It made the stories of these movies suck. Contrast that with how Andor and The Mandalorian deliver female characters that are amazing. Leia is a true badass... as she was in the original movies, without the Force. Bo Katan's character goes through a deep understanding of what it really means to lead her people, and earns it. Strong women, that don't require a man to fail, in order to be strong on their own.
I did watch The Clone Wars (note this is the 2008 TV series, not the 2003 one). The last season (especially the finale) was amazing, up there with Andor for best Star Wars content of all time. But watching the rest of it to get to that point was honestly a slog, and plenty of the shows are gag-worthy or at least blah. It's bad enough I can't recommend it to friends, but I've been trying to think about whether there's a minimal subset of shows I can recommend watching to give enough of the experience that you can appreciate that finale without needing to suffer through the rest of it.
Andor comes with the distinct advantage that you don't have to slog through hours of questionable content to get to the good stuff.
Andor is the first SW content I have re-watched since Jedi.
[spends a few minutes on a mental inventory]
Well, okay: I watched all the SW eps with my son. (His words after seeing Ep1 were "Daddy, that wasn't a very good movie.")
Still, I rest my case. Andor is the first content that I would actually miss if it went away.
Well...they do mess up group chats, and images and other basic features usually don't work the best, so...what's wrong with this criticism?
I'm sure Google could figure out how to make it play along nicer (they already implemented reactions, so don’t give me bullshit telling me they can’t improve it more) or - better yet, create a more solid alternative.
That's not really Apple's job. They made a superior piece of software and reasonably want to use it to encourage people to their platform.
You might not like it - but it is allowed.
If you'd like the features Apple offers, you're welcome to move to their platform. :P
No different than if you'd legally like to watch Star Wars at home, you'll need Disney+.
Disney isn't somehow required to also offer it on Netflix. :P It's called a feature of the platform. If you'd like that feature, use that platform.
Your cousin doesn't have D+? Well, I guess y'all aren't chatting about the new episode of 'Andor' that dropped that week.
They don't have an iPhone? Guess y'all have to deal with green bubbles.
That's part of how platforms - necessarily - differentiate themselves from one another to encourage users to them, just like console exclusives.
When I was a kid, if you liked Sonic, you had a SEGA. If you liked Mario, you had a Nintendo.
Nobody in the world in the 90’s was expecting a Sonic game on a Nintendo console or vice versa.
I don’t know what changed that people are suddenly freaking out about this, lol.
It shouldn’t have to be explained in a group as highly intelligent as this one that this is simply basic anti-competitive practice.
If iMessage was everywhere it would be a monopoly and y’all would be clamouring for some alternative anyway. :P
There’s literally just no pleasing some of you, lol.
> every book, movie, TV show, video game and song fails to give me an interesting or meaningful experience
I'm curious, have you tried watching shows like Russian Doll? Andor? The Last of Us? The Leftovers?
These are shows that deal with the very deepest of human themes -- growth overcoming trauma, political radicalization, contradictory aspects of love, and finding meaning in life (respectively, for those four shows).
They're some of the most exciting and well-written pieces of art to come around in a long time. I can't imagine applying the term "grey slop" to those. And then after each episode, you can easily spend a couple of hours reading story analysis and criticism, listening to podcast analysis and so forth.
I can't help but wonder if you're not finding things like these that are actually pushing the envelope. Modern entertainment isn't stale at all, if you know where to look. (Obviously I'm not talking about the NBC reboot of the sitcom Night Court.)
I really enjoyed Andor, perhaps more than the Mandalorian which has far too many callbacks to the original movies.
They have some good stuff. Spider Man: No way home.
Mandalorian is pretty good, Star wars: Andor was the best Star Wars I've seen in a while. I guess a lot of people missed out on Andor given that almost everything Star wars has been mostly crap.
I think part of the explanation for your list involves the fact that people don't like movies that much anymore.
> the culture that made those days happen
Literally one movie, that was an unexpected hit is your contender for better culture?
In 2001 the highest grossing movie was Harry potter, and right below lord of the rings was monsters inc and jurasic park.
In 2002 Lord of the rings, Harry potter, Spiderman
in 2003 lord of the rings, matrix,nemo and pirates of the caribean.
Like how is that any different to now when you have pirates, spiderman, some children disney movie and fantastic beats which is just more harry potter?
> the old skills are no longer there.
Dune had more practical effects than lord of the rings. In 2001 the TV golden age had not started. Shows like the sopranos and the wire where struggling to find an audience. Friends and CSI reigned. Nowadays House of the Dragon and Last of US two high quality shows, with good use of practical effects are doing better than comparable mediocre daytime tv.
Even blockbusters are in many ways better. Andor is a million times better than anything from the 2000s prequels.
Recently I watched a film critic analyze the new Andor Star Wars show as anti-fascist art. He (rightfully) predicted the analysis video would be demonetized for using the wrong words and images.
We've recently seen plenty of bad content based on old franchises - from Star Trek to Tolkien - and I'm curious what will be the effect of this. I see two possible directions of improvements: one is that the producers will learn their lessons and start producing better quality, following the lead of Star Wars (where some of the best works, like Andor, came after the biggest flops, like the sequels films); the other is that the producers will start steering away from franchises and focus more on original content. Both directions would be an improvement, but I'm not very hopeful for either of them.
the comment you're replying to shows revenue up 8% for them. Is there any evidence of this claim? It seems like everyone is watching Andor, and they're fresh off the new Avatar movie, one of the highest grossing films ever? like i don't watch any of these movies, hate marvel and the new star wars, but you're just wrong?
Wolf of Wall Street is Scorsese, aka 'Casino'.
One of the few remaining greats.
I agree Andor has better writing.
I could be crazy, but I feel that there is a 'sanitzation' happening, and it could be a multi-faceted thing.
Of course there is 'violence' but it's generally very clean and surreal, even when they are trying really hard to make it dirty, it just feels fake.
It might even just be bland writing by people with limited life experience?
But I feel that we are all 'careful about what we say' in a way we were not before.
On Smartless and Conan all the actors just tell each other how much they 'love one aother', it's purid, a bit revolting. ('aka' I hope you consider me for you next project and don't think I'm one of the 'bad people').
Where are the deviants? Wierdos? Trolls? Odd looking people?
Just Google 'Character Actor' - and you get a long list of old guys!
Scorsese packs his films with tons of very regular looking people, and the production design embellishes but it feels very real, just part of why I think his villains are more 'scary'.
The Joe Pesci "You Think I'm Funny?" from Goodfellas is one of the most unsettling bits in cinema - and consider how simple the scene is and even the relative power dynaic of the characters. He's not the head of the mob, or even a mass murderer like 'Dahmer'.
And probaably 'globalism' aka 'global audiences' is a primary factor among others.
Anyhow - Kermit himself is a classic case.
Have a look at this classic Kermit and Cookie Monster, the later throws a wrench into Kermits thing and he gets pissed. For some reason that level of emotional reality just does not exist on Barney or Paw Patrol.
Watching Paw Patrol feels dystopian, I watch my newphews watching that and it feels more like a 'visual opioid' than anything else.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=kermit+being+violent&client=firefox-b-d&biw=1077&bih=580&tbm=vid&sxsrf=AJOqlzWNcW5UfqiwqhUeMIitHv2lzA8ZtQ%3A1675404150796&ei=dqPcY-eXMLjl5NoPvZqqiAo&ved=0ahUKEwjnqo3q1vj8AhW4MlkFHT2NCqEQ4dUDCAw&uact=5&oq=kermit+being+violent&gs_lcp=Cg1nd3Mtd2l6LXZpZGVvEAMyBQghEKABOgcIIxCwAhAnOgUIABCRAjoFCAAQgAQ6CggAEIAEEBQQhwI6BwghEKABEAo6CAghEBYQHhAdUOACWNhNYPxQaAlwAHgAgAF4iAGHEJIBBDE5LjSYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz-video#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9e0eab1a,vid:y-Z1BFLteSw
"We're cheaper than droids and easier to replace." - Line from Andor, Episode 9.
My gosh, I thought Andor was just a horrific bore. I literally couldn't stay awake for it. It felt like about four episodes worth of story stretched out to 12 episodes. I feel like with all the glowing reviews, people are watching it through the lens of being Star Wars universe fans, and not judging it objectively against other content.
I did enjoy the Mandalorian series because at least it had the comic relief of Grogu, if the rest was a bit of a slog.
Reading the piece it seems like the author is upset they weren’t able to guess the suspect, and blamed the movie for it.
I watched it twice over the weekend, and the second viewing showed how many details were in plain view the whole time. Which was the central gag of the movie.
Up front, I’ve liked every Johnson film, except for Looper. Not that Looper was poorly crafted, just that I didn’t connect with it.
I thought Last Jedi was the best SW movie since Empire, since it had actual things to say. Andor is the only other SW media I’ve seen that I’ve enjoyed as much.
So I’m clearly in Johnson’s audience.
Don't look back - you made the right call. I enjoyed Westworld S1, and just finished S4. So full of self-important idiocy. Every line half-whispered as though it's the ultimate drama, but not a single character anyone might care about or identify with.
One of their problems was dragging various actors/characters through season after season - I got absolutely sick of every single one of them. I don't know how they managed their lines with a straight face.
Another was setting everyone up for this ongoing global-stakes quest. Andor just showed that you can make an exceptional story out of small slices of a bigger setting. It often feels to me that when a show/movie sees its character attain super powers, they struggle with storytelling afterwards, being forced to invent higher and higher stakes. Marvel movies (outside of something like Logan), The Matrix (IMO), etc.
Streaming is in an interesting place because a lot of the big hits (at least from my POV) are now such lavish productions that like movies, their sequels do not necessarily arrive year after year. So The White Lotus, House of the Dragon, and Andor (of Disney+) are being filmed in 2023, and will not be returning until 2024.
It's an interesting scheduling situation- so they're going to have to put out new content to fill the void in the meantime for the fans of such shows who have nothing to look forward to for an entire year, to keep them from unsubscribing.
Capricious enforcement sucks
See also Andor episode 8 (spoilers so I won't post exact details) ;)
> It amazes me how being competent is enough to make you the best thing in Star Wars.
Really, Andor is the best sw thing since The Empire Strikes Back. The first episode of Mando was OK, but then it continued in the style of 1960s TV western which isn't my thing.
In general star wars is meh. It's like The Who: all energy, little musical talent (which was great at the time but doesn't age well). Except most SW movies don't even have energy.
What's amazing is that most folks who get a crack at Star Wars can't even apply the dumbest version of its formula—mash up a few genre-things, apply Star Wars lipstick—competently. That is all The Mandalorian did, and that's all it took to put it well in the top half of all Star Wars media. It's simple, it's easy, yet most of the folks involved just don't seem to get it.
Agree with most of your take. The worst thing about Andor was that nearly every scene was too long. It's not slow in an "it's slow on purpose and is still making good use of its time" way like a lot of excellent film and television is, it's slow in a "the writers and/or editors weren't good enough, or weren't given enough time, to make it better" sort of way. I agree with the article that it's not clear the politics of Andor are in service of any kind of real message, but they sure are shocking to see in something Disney put out. It's not that they're shocking in an absolute sense, but I'd never have believed The Mouse would green light something like it.
Falcon and Winter Soldier actually had some similarly dark, realistic politics going on, and even got a little close to saying something with it at the end (before shying away and saying nothing at all, instead, because Disney's run by cowards) but didn't go nearly as far as Andor. The execs must have been really high when the Andor scripts passed their desks for approval.
There are some good paragraphs here but this is mostly overwrought. The piece buries what I think the essential truth of the series is: most of the mature relationship and political context Andor pulls in is just texture and good storytelling.
What Andor does well is make the various cartoony facets of the Star Wars universe seem real. The "Empire" in Andor isn't just evil in the abstract, it's evil in a familiar way. Andor grapples directly with genocide as a real thing, it tries to render the banality of that evil on screen, and then you realize that Lucas portrayed genocide on an even grander scale in the first movie and it was hard to even notice it for what it was? ANH's genocide was literally a Bond villain trope.
But that doesn't make Andor coherently political; it just makes it more grounded. The blasters in Andor are the first in any Star Wars IP that seemed lethal; the TIE fighter that buzzes pseudo-Trotsky and pseudo-Lenin on Aldhani actually felt dangerous; the economy of the mining world seemed like it produced something other than pod races and cantinas; Cassian actually might hook up with people, &c &c &c. It's just decent storytelling. Like, this is one of the very few bits of Star Wars IP where it's clear that goal #1 was "make a good movie".
The rest of Star Wars has been utterly cursed with fan service since the first showing of ANH.
So anyways this review has me when it uses Andor to shine a light on just how stupid the rest of Star Wars is, and loses me when it tries to draw extra meaning out of Andor itself.
Andor is good, by the way, definitely watch it.
It amazes me how being competent is enough to make you the best thing in Star Wars.
Andor is just that: competent (oftentimes barely competent: as most SW shows and movies it still can't master the art of walking and taking at the same time. Even the most "dynamic" scenes are actors making two steps, stopping, talking without even moving their bodies or hands or arms, then making two more steps, repeat).
The article has weird obsession with sex (is the author an adolescent themselves?). There are actual grown-up things Andor did that really work in show's favor:
- people are shown to be generally competent regardless of gender or race, and grown ups are generally treated as grown-ups, and not bumbling idiots
- rebellion is shown as actual rebellion: multiple factions, and "we have to kill a few to save multitudes". Which is refreshing after four decades of "rebels are angels, empire is evil"
- the Empire is shown as an actual thing that exists and works. And it's rather efficient at what it does (and fails as empires often do)
But all that is hurt by the format (three 30-minute episodes making a single "story", repeat 4 times). All that could be condensed in two hours. And it's hurt by Diego Luna whose limited acting ability hurts the character and every scene he's in.
Thanks for that recommendation. It sounds like Andor should be worth watching.
I was totally sceptical about new Star Wars shows when Rogue One came out and had no interest in going to see it. However, I ended up watching it while I was tired (but not able to sleep) on a long-haul flight. To my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it as a solid adventure film and I watched it again a year or two later on Disney+.
> This may be an unpopular opinion
I believe it's not so unpopular.
I believe it depends on the demography, I, for one, am tired of seeing things I grew up with being ruined by poor writing and/or low interest in keeping the source material as a pivotal element of the narration.
Few examples
- Foundation wasn't bad per se, if it was marketed as fan fiction. As an adaptation of Asimov's works it's really bad and also chose a timeline that's totally unsatisfying for everybody, both newcomers and book fans. Starting from "Prelude to Foundation" was a much better idea to set up the stage for future story development and as an introduction to the characters.
- Rings of Power, same sin: it isn't Tolkien, it is a fan fiction with some actors cosplaying Tolkien characters that, at its center, portrays a very silly, very boring, romantic story between the female protagonist and the male villain. Teenage good, if the villain was no other than Sauron, AKA "The Lord of the Rings".
- Andor, that I too consider good, is, from an objective POV, just decent. Decent enough in this time and space to stand out compared to the endless list of monstrosities that Disney recently produced especially the Star Wars themed ones, but certainly not a masterpiece, as many have called it.
- Willow: lets' not talk about it. A mediocre movie from the late 80s that has gained a cult status only because, IMO, the video game was reaaaalllyyy good, that had only one reason to be re-adapted to modern times: scrape the bottom of the barrel. It is so bad that you can actually feel sorry for he people who worked at making it.
I don't get the positive reception I'm reading about Andor here.
I've watched it since I've seen it mentioned in positive light multiple times - the rebellion plotline is nice but main character development is super dragged out and feels pointless - the arduous childhood flashbacks, dramatic sister searching - to end up screwing in Miami - so many episodes felt weak and irrelevant. The heist was dragged out far too much - who cares what sw goat milk tastes like ?
Entire season could be condensed into a one and a half hour movie and nothing of value would be lost.
Not saying it's bad - but far from "the wire in SW universe" or other praises people seem to be singing it.
FWIW I watched Andor on the advice of a friend (I'm also not a Disney guy, nor really a huge Star Wars fan past the originals) and really loved it. The Star Wars tie-ins are a bit besides the point, though the design references are neat. It feels like a movie about an insurgency against Franco, just set in the future.
I agree, in an alternative universe with a different director (maybe even a different edit), the show could probably be pretty good. HotD was good, but frankly it's a capitalization on how god-awful GoT's 8th season was. They could have produced a wet shit like Amazon did and it would still be a redemption arc for G.R.R.M's television adaptations.
Andor I haven't seen yet (not a disney guy) but I sorta get the same vibes. Disney, for all their artistic weal and woe, makes a ton of safe and boring films these days. It doesn't really impress me that they can put together an M-rated show that doesn't suck.
> baffled by my 24 year-old SO’s interest in binging an apparently infinite litany of TV shows … TNG & DS9 as a kid and was horrified by what snippets of Discovery and Picard I came across
The thing that bemuses me is those who hate the new trek shows with a passion, and find the time to keep watching and constantly bitching about it online. It is like complaining is a hobby in itself and they are almost looking for something they don't like or to feel superior about their judgement to those who do like it. Other franchises have similar subsets of “fans” too.
I used to watch too much TV/films IMO, I probably still do though I'm a lot more selective since getting into more varied hobbies that can easily consume a lot of time (running (usually off-road), baking, HEMA). But even when I had the free time to watch that much I found there was enough out there that if something didn't work for me I could find a list of other things to try instead of sticking with something I wasn't getting much out of.
Though be careful passing judgement on modern Trek: I'm slowly rewatching TNG with a friend and while some of it has aged well, fair chunks of it was more massively ropey than rose-tinted memories prepared me for! Also, if I hadn't at least passively consumed (i.e. had on TV while I was doing other things so not particularly concentrating on) other parts of recent Trek and Starwars, I might not have bothered to try some of the better stuff like Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and Andor (the latter probably being the second best TV thing recently for me, the first being Severance).
I’m 41 and I’m utterly baffled by my 24 year-old SO’s interest in binging an apparently infinite litany of TV shows from streaming services. I’ve watched the first six seasons of Game Of Thrones, the first season of Dark, all of The Expanse (reading the last book of the final trilogy now), His Dark Materials (because I read the book) and Andor. That’s it. I watched some Star Trek TNG & DS9 as a kid and was horrified by what snippets of Discovery and Picard I came across. I find the bulk of modern entertainment to be an utter insult to viewers.
For example, in star wars, instead of doing something interesting or different
While I agree with everything you said as such, the Andor TV show (and Rogue One to lesser extent) indicates that they are at least capable of doing interesting things in the Star Wars universe, beyond Good space wizard vs Evil space wizard. I fear however that most fans don't actually want that and that Andor will be an aberration.
I thought this at first, but it's arguably that Rogue One and Andor are the only Disney properties that deeply tie in to the universe. They really set up the events for the original trilogy and make them feel more filled out and real. The tone is one of sacrifice and hope, and intentionally plays as a counterpoint to the powerful space wizards in the films. It feels like the creators respect the narrative.
The thing that has most worn me out of all the star wars, marvel, etc. franchises is their simple moral framework pitting good vs. evil. There is basically as little moral ambivalence as possible. I find myself inhabiting a world full of moral ambivalence, and so these types of movies and shows just don't offer me anything to take away.
Does Andor break that formula? Does it paint the empire / the rebels in a less cartoonish light than other star wars?
>30 year open mouth beard consumers and wanted to 'blow their minds' with
No one said anything about blowing minds.
>But because it is planned to drag on
Unfortunately all shows are infected with this garbage. You end up grading this stuff relatively on a spectrum (“don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” etc) . This the “ads” of the streaming era. It is so ubiquitous people either build a tolerance, tune-out during the interval, or stop watching tv all together in protest.
>to make baby men feel more sophisticated while hooking them into consistently watching
A more sophisticated show with better writing and actors would indeed make people feel more sophisticated…yes. If, to take another example, somebody pitched me “Better Call Saul, but in space,” I’d probably watch that as well. Frankly, Dune is more a children’s movie than Andor, so you might as well say that 25-40 year olds have no business amusing themselves with science fantasy or sci-fi at all.
The litmus test for this seems to be: Make the exact same scifi show (space etc) but without the Star Wars branding. Will it be considered a children’s move? My answer in this case, no. Will it still be decent? Yes it would.
Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Obi-Wan are all magnitudes more juvenile than this attempt.
A quasi-spoiler perhaps, but I personally find it hilarious that a subplot involves a workers revolt in what could be a Tesla gigafactory 20 years from now…in a tv show produced by Disney.
Yes, Andor has been the most decent Star Wars throwaway yet for me, and that's including all the new movies and tv vehicles that came before. Understated, brooding, solid acting, and free of the stale plot and shoddy writing in the others that becomes apparent once the atmosphere wears off. Proof in this era that you can create something decent without giving the left and right cultural attaches too much to whine about (though I'm sure they'll find something).
Andor (ongoing) is one of the best scifis of the last 5 years for me.
It’s a slow start though for the first 2 episodes.
Andor I have 2 episodes left to finish, ah I feel its so slow and drawn out.
She Hulk, I hated the first episode, but it kinda came into its own and I ended up really enjoying it, but the last episode absolutely ruined the whole thing for me.
Andor is an amazing adult show about the causes that drive people to take up arms against their government. It's not a traditional Star Wars show.
She Hulk is an engaging legal comedy in the style of Ally McBeal, with Marvel elements.
Both get better after the first episode.
To be honest, the first Andor episode is really slow and I also almost dropped it right there, but the rest of the show is actually quite good (so far).
If you have been Star Wars fan since 70s with detail knowledge, then Andor and Obi-Wan were sub-par at best. She-Hulk is quite terrible if you know the comics background. As new age of PC-ness with emphasis on wokeness these days, it is quite good especially the 4th wall breakout in last episode. Fear Street, Escape, Koreans and anime such as Castlevania on Netlifx are very refreshing as compare to westernized-only content on Disney+. By the way, my Disney+ is free from some local popular deal. Mamy I know also on free. Plus multiple subscription to Espn and Hulu. So the number of subscribers are likely heavy double or triple counted.
Obviously this is subjective because my viewing hours are higher on netflix than Disney. Disney doesn't have any dumbout content.
Andor was trash. Obi-Wan was trash. She-Hulk started out bad, got better, then killed itself in the last episode.
Most of the marvel stuff has been terrible compared to Netflix's Jessica Jones, Dare Devil, Luke Cage.
All the other streaming services already do the weekly thing. I think I enjoy it more and remember more, so it's worth the delay. People have actually talked about the latest episodes of (for example) Andor and Rings of Power longer than the week after the first episodes.