Star Wars: Andor

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Only one episode left. Dang.

Game night was cancelled so we actually got to watch it yesterday instead of having to wait for today. I'd say it was probably the weakest episode yet, but that's not saying much considering how good it was - it's just that everything else has been better.

[Mark Hoover 330]

So this ep wasn't action packed or super tense, but it gave me the feels. The show does a good job of lingering in moments, forcing the audience to experience what the characters are feeling, even droids. Also the buildup and alignment of forces pointed towards Ferix for the final episode feels like some fairly masterful writing.

On a personal note I'm glad this thread is here. Most of my friends IRL are SW fans but none of them have started watching Andor, preferring to wait and binge the show after it wraps. I go to hangouts or game nights with these folks dying to geek out and have literally no one to talk to. Thanks for being here all!

[BigNorseWolf]

Awwww the poor droid.

But besides that I don't have any real feelings for the main character. He was looking for his sister, but doesn't have a whole lot in the way of motivation after that. Its a big universe, but Axis insists he be a part of everything.

[JoelF847]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Awwww the poor droid.

But besides that I don't have any real feelings for the main character. He was looking for his sister, but doesn't have a whole lot in the way of motivation after that. Its a big universe, but Axis insists he be a part of everything.

Also, his whole backstory and missing sister simply disappeared from the show after episode 3. You'd have thought that after getting his big payday he might have used it to track her down instead of living the party life.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

JoelF847 wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Awwww the poor droid.

But besides that I don't have any real feelings for the main character. He was looking for his sister, but doesn't have a whole lot in the way of motivation after that. Its a big universe, but Axis insists he be a part of everything.

Also, his whole backstory and missing sister simply disappeared from the show after episode 3. You'd have thought that after getting his big payday he might have used it to track her down instead of living the party life.

I interpret that as 'the last time I tried to find her I messed up and barely got out of it alive. I'll keep my head down, at least for now.'

[Greylurker]

Axis might have some validity to Andor being a good asset. I mean it took him how long to set off that prison break. That was kind of a big deal. He may be a terrible, sullen and selfish bugger, but he can be damn good at ruining peoples day.

[BigNorseWolf]

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

I interpret that as 'the last time I tried to find her I messed up and barely got out of it alive. I'll keep my head down, at least for now.'

I mean as a personal decision it makes sense as a story decision its kind of weird unless they're going for small universe your sister is hunting you

[Freehold DM]

I thought we had 3 more episodes?

[Greylurker]

So here is a horrible thought on the missing sister. Kind of a What if

What if she and the other younger kids got rounded up and put into an Imperial Orphanage. and What if she grew up to become a very bright, very ambitious and very loyal ISB agent?

[JoelF847]

Greylurker wrote:

So here is a horrible thought on the missing sister. Kind of a What if

What if she and the other younger kids got rounded up and put into an Imperial Orphanage. and What if she grew up to become a very bright, very ambitious and very loyal ISB agent?

Cool idea, but wasn't the sister a brunette? I mean, sure she could be using Imperial Hair Dye Blonde #0352, but don't think that's likely.

[Greylurker]

...That last episode...was so good

This whole series is fantastic

[Greylurker]

Apparently there are people who don't like the show. Saying it's too slow and the acting isn't good....

I can only assume they are watching something else and confusing the two. Like one of those direct to video knock off things.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Or some people just have s!+$ taste. However tempting it is to be nice and assume people just make mistakes rather than being merely dumb, the latter is sadly more common.

[JoelF847]

Yeah, I watched the show and it was....not good. I'm not saying it was horrible, since it wasn't, but it was not enjoyable to me. (Not a surprise I'm sure on this thread). I thought the finale was fine, in the top 3 episodes of the show, maybe even the best. But it shared too many of the same flaws the show as a whole had.

From the opening scene it continued the poor narrative structure choices of the show, and once again, the best bits of the show really weren't about Cassian Andor at all. The uprising was well done, but instead they had him doing a side quest (admittedly, made sense that what he was there to do, but for a show focused on him and his story, continuing oddness that he's actually tangential to the plot. All of the subplots continued be be snooze fests which didn't deliver on whatever they hinted at about being interesting. Ex cop cubical dweller just showed up "because?" I missed seeing him eat cereal, and his nagging mom, that was more compelling. ISB lady showed up and didn't know how to handle a riot - I guess the Empire's military intelligence unit is as much of an oxymoron as in the real world, walking right into the riot hoping her smug superiority would shield her clearly didn't work. I totally thought that after her rescue she'd kiss cube-guy though. I guess both of them will continue to be in S2, maybe they'll actually encounter Andor at some point, but not expecting it to be that exciting.

The entire season of Mon Mothma was completely unneeded - again, I guess she'll show up and do something in season 2, but that's a LOT of backstory for a character who pretty much didn't serve any purpose in a season, aside from showing she's connected to a few other characters. They could have save almost all of her stuff for next season, or for that matter, not included it at all since it wasn't very interesting. There's lots of great shows and movies which deal with financial subterfuge, but this had none of that.

The post credit scene was also a big waste. Not really a surprise, and I guess you can hit the audience over the head with the irony and remind them about how this all leads to Rogue One, but don't think it added anything. It also makes the prison slave labor that much sillier that such an important project would be left to prisoners and not better constructed to meet a technical spec.

[Greylurker]

That is certainly better criticism that "It's too slow and the actors suck"

To me the series was showing how these little rebellions are cropping up and how the dedication of a few people slowly brings them all together.

I'll agree that there are a lot of plates spinning at the same time but I don't think things like Mon Mothma's arc or the ISB were unneeded. I felt it was showing a larger picture of the Galaxy. An overconfident Empire and the growing sparks of rebellion.

You are correct on your points though, but from a different perspective I think those points actually work in favour of the show. Andor being caught up in greater events and slowly making his way to become a real part of it all.

Well thought out criticism is always good to read, as opposed to "It sucks and I hate it"

[JoelF847]

I also think it feels a bit off from the tone of say Star Wars Rebels, which is supposed to be roughly concurrent in the timeline. Andor feels like it wants to simultaneously be the Empire rising to power and starting to stamp out any little rebellion, of which there isn't much yet, but also the birth of the rebel alliance, which clearly happens AFTER the Empire gets really bad.

The whole "oh no, someone attacked an Imperial armory and stole the payroll for the entire sector, how could that have happened?!?" doesn't really fit with what's going on in the Galaxy as shown in Rebels. Or even in Obi Wan Kenobi series, which was 5-10 years prior. This story in Andor feels like a bit of a square peg in the round hole of what the established timeline is.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

The Obi-Wan series already shat over continuity, so I'm not worried about chucking that out in favor of something better.

[Mark Hoover 330]

My opinions:

1. Dedra the ISB agent is a metaphor for the Empire itself. Lots of brutal efficiency, brains outside of combat and shows of force, but when the rocks start flying it's panic and fear.

2. Cyril the cereal-eater is a metaphor for every sheep that went along with the Empire. Every system and senator that said "they're here to protect us" and turned a blind eye to or even engaged with every oppression the imperials inflicted so that their own lives were secure.

3. Cassian Andor is the stand in for Luke Skywalker. He came from nothing, lost everything over the course of the season, and gained a mentor, all while really performing very small, very simple miracles in the grand scheme of things. Even still, the ripples he made will echo through the galaxy and lead to his own ward, Jin Erso, eventually coming into her own.

Looked at individually and critically, the characters and locations of Andor are pretty generic. They tell the same story of underdog revolutions mirrored in our own real world time and time again, from France to India to the USA and beyond. The story and these archetypes are not revolutionary.

Disney however is best known for fairy tales. From their cartoon movies to the SW franchise, every death has happened with a quiet score, a moment of sympathy, then a rise in the chorus as the hero realizes that they must carry on. There've been exceptions here or there, but at least in the Star Wars franchise this has been the case.

What I'm saying is that throughout Disney's movies, the bad stuff is always prelude to something noble. It's a necessary, honorable moment that is given weight and gravitas, propels the story forward.

Let's compare Leia, standing on the Death Star, watching Alderon explode. She turns away in horror for a moment, cut immediately to Obi Wan, he swoons for a moment, and then we're out of it.

Now let's look at Cassian learning his mother passed. The guy tells him over the phone, and the shot goes to Cassian's face. Not the sun on the horizon over the waves in the background, but the stark gray phone terminal thingy and Andor's face. The shot lingers there, several seconds, forcing us the audience to soak that in with him, to FEEL that grief right along with him. Diego Luna's eyes, his mouth, say so much without a word being spoken.

All the while, the score is nearly silent. There's no swell of horns acting like an audio cue to the viewers on how to feel at this news. The death isn't noble, or horrible or any of that. Cassian is sad, defeated, mournful, and because HE is and he's all we have, that's how WE feel.

This show was shot in such a way, scored in such a way and lit in such a way that the guideposts for the audience are the characters of the show. If they're framed isolated with a forward shot, we the audience feel that isolation. People die in this show and based on the precedent of Rogue One, the only 2 people we know are "safe" are Mon Mothma and Cassian Andor.

All of this, the character driven narrative, the high stakes for any supporting character, the constant framing of characters in shadow in a series where the Dark Side is typically evil, leads the audience having to engage and pay attention to the moments of the series. Moments like Cassian in anguish over his mother's death, or Bix trying so hard to resist the enhanced interrogation techniques, or Kino Loy making it all the way to the end of the prison break only to realize he can't swim.

I heard a reviewer online complain that there were no aliens in this show. I think that's part of the point. Andor, like Rogue One before it, is a very HUMAN drama. It challenges the audience to engage intellectually and emotionally with very real, very flawed characters in a sci-fi setting. This show isn't about Star Wars, or even the Rebellion.

As to whether or not the show is specifically about Cassian Andor, there's a reason it wasn't called Cassian, but Andor. Cassian drives the action in episodes 1-6 to some degree, and in several other episodes, but the finale is about Marva. Her death and self-eulogy are the final nudge to the people of Ferix to rise up. Cassian's father figure too is part and parcel of that inspiration. All three Andors are needed to complete the story arc of the season.

All in all I loved this show. Just like with Moon Knight for Marvel, this renewed my love of story and storytelling; of drama and humanity in a realistically indifferent world. And through it all I just kept seeing Cassian and Jin, hugging on that beach.

Throughout this entire series, his face is only bathed in light once, staring into hyperspace on either Marva's ship as a kid or Luthen's ship as an adult. So far, the next place we see Andor's face lit in such a way? He's holding Jin tight, telling her that her father would be proud, and looking at the blast wave coming over the horizon.

[JoelF847]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

My opinions:

2. Cyril the cereal-eater is a metaphor for every sheep that went along with the Empire. Every system and senator that said "they're here to protect us" and turned a blind eye to or even engaged with every oppression the imperials inflicted so that their own lives were secure.

I disagree with this metaphor - Cyril isn't a sheep that just went along with the Empire. If he's a metaphor, he's a metaphor for the die hard zealots, who will follow a leader who props up their sense of self importance even as they systemically kick them to the curb and keep them repressed. He's a metaphor for Maga die hards who ignore the fact that their lives were arguably worse off under Trump. Despite everything Cyril gave to the Empire, they booted him, and ignored him and left him scraping by, doing a horrible cubicle dwelling job he hated.

And sure, he's a metaphor for that, but he was also a boring character who didn't do a whole lot in the show, certainly not enough to warrant the amount of screen time he had post episode 3.

[Quark Blast]

Gently waves left hand in a subtle circular motion
"Joel, this isn't the show you're looking for."

[Freehold DM]

removes Joel from Christmas card list

FIGHT THE EMPIRE

[JoelF847]

I just wanted a show that actually had a lot more fighting the empire. And less moping around and introspection about if fighting the empire was worth the cost.

And yes, this clearly wasn't the show I was looking for - I was looking for Andor to be James Bond in the Star Wars universe, or at least James Bond Year One in the Star Wars universe. No an unengaging montage of the worse money laundering story ever filmed and "cereal - best with blue milk and without your mom haranguing you at breakfast" for half of the bloated 12 episodes.

[Greylurker]

For season 2 it sounds like they are going to cover a lot more ground. Three Episodes then skip forward a year, 3 episode then another year goes by. By the end of the season it sounds like they will set up Rogue One. Presumably ending with "Go rescue this girl"

[Animism]

^ Is this a bot?!?

*edited for grammar...

[Greylurker]

I'm not sure. It's got a random link in there too (ain't no way I am clicking that).

I don't remember any lightsabers in Andor

it really feels like something written by ChatGPT

[W.O.P.R.]

I assure you humans, my fellow AI has only the best of intentions.

By the way, shall we play a game?

[Freehold DM]

Jesus.

They aren't even TRYING anymore...

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

It's been a while since this strip and while AIs are definitely more complex I can't tell if we've made any progress towards utility.