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.
The prison episode is a masterpiece and would have been an amazing movie on its own. It‘s weird how zany the other SW shows and even movies look now in comparison. I‘m really sad there can’t be another season.
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.
- [deleted]
Be sure to watch for after the credits of the last episode of season 1!!
I find the credit heist escape was epic
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.
On one hand I want to say "fuck it, let them have whatever the fuck they want", given they should've known how well-received the show is by critics and viewers alike and how they should consider it basically the savior of the Star Wars brand. On the other hand, I guess it's still a business, at the end of the day.
> the savior of the Star Wars brand
I think Rogue One is the best Star Wars ever and Andor is in the same vein. But.
The savior of the Star Wars brand is always going to be the latest lightsaber-fest for 10-year-olds. That creates customer loyalty that will survive forever. Those kids then grow up and get to bitch about the new lightsaber-fest, and to fawn over the artsy drama.
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.
Well, you did watch Andor, so you'll probably give a spin to the next decently-reviewed thing aimed at your demographic. Most of SW production is for children and teenagers.
Andor S2 was around $350M and most likely paid for itself and some. [1]
> On the other hand, I guess it's still a business, at the end of the day.
You're right, in the sense that Andor was an exception regarding every other SW show on Disney+ for the past 4 years. All had high production costs and seems like Andor is the only one which recouped itself. Acolyte was a spectacular viewship failure.
So the business logic would be to cap costs, most likely in half for now on. I don't have high expectations of Disney learning the right lessons from Andor & Tony.
[1] https://www.thewrap.com/star-wars-andor-revenue-disney-plus/
How exactly does a streaming show pay? Is it measured in new subscriptions when viewers hear the buzz and sign up to the service due to that show? Otherwise, the users stream it, or don't, they pay the same either way.
The inverse question too: why do streaming platforms cancel popular shows? Watcher count doesn't seem to be the metric I think it is.
For quite a while, the further the films/series are separated from the original trilogy, the better they seem to be.
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.
What I really liked about The Acolyte is that it showed how evil the Jedi really are behind their holier-than-thou propaganda.
Whoever governs really should implement a R&D program to eradicate the midi-chlorian infestation and rid the galaxy of the scourge of both Jedi and Sith in one fell swoop.
Ironically Andor is one of the closest to A New Hope narratively.
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.
It ties in but isn't really part of the main storyline except incidentally. You could say the same thing about Rogue One though the tie-in is even stronger in that case. The Mandalorian is pretty separate other than baby yoda.
It's not part of the main storyline of Luke's journey as an individual & the Jedi order but it is a very big part of one of the main storylines of a ragtag bunch of rebels sticking it to the empire.
A storyline which I'd argue was strongest in A New Hope & the initial trilogy & was weakened by the increased focus on individual storylines in the anakin & rey trilogies.
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.
Yes, the overall narrative of the prequels was good and very promising. It's so unfortunate that they turned out to simply be shockingly bad as movies - "clumsly" really doesn't describe how stodgy and badly put-together they were.
I honestly hope Disney will eventually remake them from scratch, with the excuse that FX have progressed dramatically since then. They could even reuse McEwan, considering he's supposed to be an older character already.
I don't think any of the politics from the prequel trilogy lands. It's too cartoony for that.
Whereas Senator Mothma's story arc had me engrossed from beginning to end. From the complexities of a Senator's social life, to her financial difficulties, to the medieval like politics of marrying off her daughter for the sake of a political and financial alliance, to her risking more and more, to her brave and powerful speech condemning the empire.
There is nothing in the prequels that hits nearly as hard. Because it's all dialog the audience isn't paying attention to because the Jedi stuff is more engaging, and because the political stakes never seem that great.
Sure, the execution was crappy - but he chose to make one of his new main characters a Senator, had the Senate as a set piece, etc.
One of the original movie's main characters was a senator. It's hardly original.
Leia's role as a member of the senate was in one scene in the original movie, and it was not clear if she was a senator or working on behalf of a senator. The senate being dissolved in another scene had just as little impact as her affiliation with the senate as far the movie itself goes.
There is politics in the original trilogy. It’s just more thematic than literal political manoeuvring. The story of a rag tag group of rebels fighting against a massive entrenched empire is a political one by nature. And Lucas has directly stated his inspiration for that dynamic was the Vietnam war. And spoiler alert America isn’t the rebels. I think Andor does a great job of fleshing out the more day to day feelings of being in an era of rebellion against an empire bent on domination
The Simpsons had it right when they parodied Episode 2 as a boring story about redistricting.
No, absolutely zero credit.you have to hand it to Lucas for trying to significantly expand his space opera by adding in galactical politicsWhile "evil guy corrupting a democracy" is certainly a noble and relevant thing to explore, the prequels don't explore that in any useful or fun or insightful way. It's literally just an excuse for pew pew pew lasers and spaceships and laser swords.
(Remarkably, they also make the democracy, and the Jedi who defend it, seem almost universally super boring and dumb and uncool. Making Jedi uncool is some kind of special achievement...)
Even as a real-world allegory, it sucks.
The bad guys in real life aren't even remotely like the Sith, who are physically twisted freaks that are explicitly like "yep! we're evil!"
Real-life bad guys are often good looking and most of them think they're actually doing the right thing.
Andor and Rogue One are better prequels than the prequel trilogy in that they better match the tone of the original Star Wars and do a better job filling in the parts of the back story viewers care about.
How did the Rebellion start? How was it organized? What led to building the Death Star? How did they get the plans to give to Leia to give to Luke?
The only part of the prequel trilogy relevant to the story in A New Hope is the final battle between Anakin and Obi Wan.
If the prequels taught me anything, it's that these questions are usually better left unanswered.
What's cool about the Force isn't the mechanics of how it works. What's cool about the Force is that it's a mystical thing that's everywhere, binding all living things together.
And we honestly don't need to know how the Rebellion started. It doesn't matter! They are the good guys, and they are messy but kind and loving and cool and they are rebelling against the cold and mean (but also sometimes cool) bad guys. In fact, the more dumb shit I know about them the less I can project myself onto them and see myself in their eyes. Because I have rebelled against mean authoritarian shit before, or at least dreamed of it, but I have never been involved with trade disputes or galactic senates or weird old religions.
This is true IMO 99.99% of the time.
Shockingly to me, Rogue One and Andor are so well done that they are exceptions to the rule.
My main (mild) criticism of the now-complete Andor->Rogue One arc is that it only put its toe into the waters of the Death Star.
Giving that concept a thematic heft well beyond its Flash-Gordon-supervillain origins appeared “fully armed and operational” in the story, but in the end it barely rises to subtext.
But there is no conflict, no interest, in exploring a building site. What are you going to talk about, contractors installing pipes? How they get the best canteen food?
It's actually better for the Death Star to be unseen, so that its full horror can only be imagined - and hence, becoming greater - in our minds.
We already have the building site scene.
This is the sort of reference I winked at - or any of the other derivatives of the infamous Clerks dialogue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA
And as has been explored the economics don’t really make sense.
Yeah. For that level of resources they probably could have just had ten Star Destroyers orbiting every known inhabited planet.
But real-world warfare history is full of these expensive disasters that, in hindsight, were spectacularly dumb ideas.
I don't think the Death Star was meant to be practical. More of a terror weapon or trump card, akin in some ways to nuclear weapons whose true value transcends their practical value. The destruction of Alderaan felt like an allegory for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The US Navy has aircraft carriers, which are every bit as ridiculous as a Death Star. They are utterly useless against well armed opponents.
But they still got built, for good political, and psychological reasons that have nothing to do with cost effectiveness.
> The US Navy has aircraft carriers, which are every bit as ridiculous as a Death Star.
They aren't ridiculous in the real world. They are in some theoretical worlds with alternate assumptions about what wars actually happen, but...
> They are utterly useless against well armed opponents.
They are quite useful, though, against the opponents that the US has actually fought against since WWII, though, which are mostly not with opponents that would be “well-armed” in the sense needed to make your claim true, are often also outside of the effective force projection radius of such opponents, and often would be inconvenient for US force projection without having convenient sea-mobile airbases with a air wing the same rough size as the median national air force.
Yeah. They project force in a way that battleships no longer can. And whether or not they're really used, the fact is that they can be used. And very few counties want to mess with a US aircraft carrier and its escort surface fleet.
Not a good analogy.
In WWII they were absolutely invaluable against a peer enemy in the Pacific theater. They were the single most important bits of military hardware in that war.
They grew more vulnerable over time, first to peer enemies and eventually to rebels funded by sorta-peer enemies like Iran. In 2025, I don't think anybody doubts that a sustained saturation attack would fail to sink or at least prevent a carrier from functioning.
(Though it's also worth noting that the Houthis haven't been able to hit one yet, even with Iranian backing)
Still, a carrier group allows the US to project a tremendous amount of force anywhere in the world, and if a nation state hits one they're going to face an absolutely tremendous amount of military wrath from the US, which kind of gives them a strength beyond their literal combat capability.
I mean exploring why the Empire builds the Death Star in the first place.
There’s a version of Andor that does a bit more than hint that the Death Star is the ultimate (and ultimately doomed) metaphorical reply to Nemik’s manifesto.
In the final analysis, the Death Star is not about power. It’s not about control. It’s a choice, meant to be the last choice for the Rebellion: Submit, or lose everything you love, everything you were, are, will be, in an instant.
But, in the end, it’s this totalizing impulse that is the Empire’s critical weakness. There are always cracks in the edifice of tyranny. Other choices.
You could have the exact same story on a completely different universe, without using any of the Star Wars IP by doing only superficial adjustments.
But also yes, it's the closest thing to the original theme since the second movie.
The second season is heavily tied to in-universe events that lead to Rogue One and A New Hope.
The first sequel just mirroring the original movie was so lame. Reference-baiting.
It's probably hard for the producers not to do fan service. But they can go overboard.
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
Skeleton Creis basically the movie Goonies .. but Star Wars, and it’s tons of fun.
They should make a new Skeleton Crew show every year with a whole new cast.
It really hits the lighthearted adventure button that to me is the core of Star Wars.
I've made peace with the fact that "Star Wars" basically means nothing w.r.t. what kind of story I can expect, both in terms of quality and variety of story. Gotta look for talented people in charge of the project and make guesses at quality that way now. I'm hopeful that with Donald Glover running the Lando movie that it'll be good, but otherwise IDK of anything else in Star Wars that I'm really looking forward to...
[Spoiler-ish] It's just a shame the show largely fails to build emotional connection with the characters. When bad things happened I mostly felt nothing.
The other thing that has always plagued SW is the fact they can travel through hyperspace, have the tech to destroy planets, but largely lack CCTV, autopilot, effective homing missiles, HD displays, etc. It's a weird mix of 70s tech and super sci-fi.
It's like, if you were leading a rebellion, would you have your secret base rigged with remotely detonated explosives, or need to go back and cackhandedly manually destroy your comms, etc?
Suspension of disbelief is stretched to breaking point sometimes.
The problem with this is that you expect tech in the Star Wars universe to echo the tech in our universe. First, of course, is that Star Wars is science fantasy, and second, why should technology progress through the same pathways ours have taken? Tech in Star Wars isn't explained, it just is, and it fits the world George Lucas created and the story he wanted to tell. Space fighters fly the way they do because WWII fighters fly the way they do; autopilots don't work because they weren't a thing in the Saturday afternoon serials of the era Lucas grew up in and was trying to emulate on screen.
It is a weird mix, but the best thing to do is just leave any desire for realistic physics or Terran historic progress at the box office.
> 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 argue they already proved this with Rogue One. Too bad we had the Abrams/Johnson dumpster fire.
I gave it a try, and it wasn't bad indeed, but honestly I have too much fatigue towards all this repetitive milking of IPs to keep my interest up.
You're aware of Rogue One, right?
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.)
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.
>5 seasons
Thank god. There's not enough meat on the bone, the writing would never have been good enough to support this.
We need more excellent, tightly spun stories.
3 seasons would have been perfect. Season 2 was too packed.
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.
Really? I was a bit annoyed about the multiple „1 year later“ jumps. There‘s plenty that happened in that time that we haven’t seen.
It built tension by itself. Time skips reinforce the idea that things are _moving fast_.
If we didn't have them, it would turn it into a drag. A dramatic year looks much more impressive when you compare it to what was a year before, than when you look at it day by day.
This explains one of my criticisms of the show, which is I would have really like to see more of the development of the rebellion on Yavin, as it stands they sort of hint at it, but I was somewhat unsatisfied by the explanation or fabric of that evolution. Lots of core plot progression are showed through images, when the whole point of a tv show is that you should be able to show it more gradually.
These I think were 12 episode seasons, maybe five 8 episode seasons would have been better.
That "cut" happened before they even started working on the show. Despite the original thought of 5 seasons, it was essentially planned for 2 seasons right from the start.
From Gilroy’s own telling, it happened during the filming of Season 1 in Scotland? That seems to be what he told Happy Sad Confused on their recent interview.
He realised that everything, absolutely everything in Star Wars needs to be designed, that it took ages to do, and that it would be forever to make 5 seasons. So he pitched to Diego to only make one more.
>they already cut the original plans from 5 seasons to 2
Wow that's a shame. I had no idea. Assuming they could've kept up the quality, that would've been amazing for their reputation and retention.
> hey 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.
From some of the interviews I saw it seemed like the time aspect was the big driver. One in particular Diego Luna was talking about a conversation he had with Gilroy and Gilroy was like "God it'd take us 10 years to make this". I get that logistically that can be a tough thing to do with actors, and also it'd be a bit odd to have Diego Luna be very noticeably older in Season 5 than he is in Rogue One.
The originals are also very mid-tier, especially the last one. It survives on nostalgia mostly.
Return of the Jedi does have the most important scene in all of Star Wars: the confrontation between Luke and the Emperor. The rest of the movie has plenty of shortcomings, but that scene more than redeems it.
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.
If by fan service you mean the scene where Darth Vader is at his most terrifying in the whole franchise, I think it was handled perfectly.
Not referring to that actually, I think that was actually a great bridge to Ep 4 that helps put the story in context for casual fans.
More the presence of the Force and Jedi lore. They were so close to not having that be part of Rogue One but were still forced to include the mystical super beings in some way. Andor was able to fully detach from that baggage, focusing on the little people doing their part. And when they did bring in the Force healer in the second season, it was exactly how you'd expect average people to respond to a mystical power that you didn't directly witness. Hope, faith, skepticism, denial, rejection.
As far as Vader goes...it does make you wonder if he's just toying with Obi-Wan when he meets him like 3 days later...
> it does make you wonder if he's just toying with Obi-Wan when he meets him like 3 days later...
I disagree.
If you set aside the difference in special effects capabilities, Vader is clearly being cautious in the light saber fight with Obi Wan on the Death Star. And we know that's because Obi Wan kicked his ass on Mustafar (THE KENOBI MINI SERIES NEVER HAPPENED I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT). And then Obi Wan never actually intends to fight Vader in earnest. He intends to become a force ghost all along. Still one step ahead of Anakin's understanding of the force.
Here's a few instances of fan service in that movie:
- Andor running into Pigperson and Grover on Yedha
- That entirely random 20-sec scene with C-3PO and R2-D2
- "Red Leader, standing by" was archive footage from A New Hope (and arguably a tribute to the late actor)
Rogue One was the first standalone movie in the Star Wars universe. There was a lot of uncertainty about how it would be received. I don't blame them for ham-fistedly shoving in there some extra linkage to the main canon... and even with that, it made much less than the "regular" sequel trilogy.
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 …
> 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.
It's the first "prestige" Star Wars TV show.
I'm a lifelong Star Wars fan, fell in love as a young kid. I remember being in 8th grade and being so excited for the prequels, and then walking out of the theater after Ep. 1 and feeling like something was just... wrong. I knew that it was junk, and not the Star Wars I fell in love with.
And from there it was pretty much further and further downhill, with occasional glimpses of hope that were quickly dashed. I tried to watch a couple more entries after the prequels, but I finally gave up and wrote it off. I've missed almost the entire last 10 years of content.
A buddy at work finally convinced me to watch Andor, and I'm so grateful he did. It is superb. I read a reddit comment that said, "This is the show that made me feel ok to be a Star Wars fan again," and I can't agree more. In a lot of ways it still feels different from Star Wars. It's hard to explain because it's in the same universe, and has similar themes (which is why it doesn't feel totally out of place), but the tone is different. It's not about Jedi knights on a mission from destiny. It's about ordinary people making decisions, and choosing hope, in the face of the oppressive might of the Empire. But god is it good. Excellent writing, great acting, suspense, intrigue, nuance, and powerful emotional scenes (that are earned by proper story buildup).
So all of that is to say, it might not be exactly what you expect, and it won't simply be "Star Wars, again," but yes you should absolutely watch it. It's a fine work of art.
I actually greatly prefer the prequels to the original trilogy. I suspect it has to do with the fact that I was a child when episode 1 came out and I was still a child when the prequels concluded.
A big part of the problem is that these movies were written, basically, for 12-year old boys. You're not going to be able to get that spark back as an adult, and it's not easy to make a movie that appeals so strongly to both demographics. And much like wu-tang, star wars (and other fun stories) is for the children. Andor is at least more adult-oriented, I think.
So, do I like the new movies? No, I literally slept through the last two they were so boring, and I found the lack of coherent plot baffling. And yes, it does make me a little sad. But seeing little girls dressed up like Rey, I'm reminded that there are better things for me to care about.
A New Hope came out between my junior and senior years in college, and I was totally blown away (as I had been ten years earlier with 2001: A Space Odyssey). When my youngest son told me the prequel trilogy was his favorite Star Wars I couldn't believe it, but he pointed out that it was the Star Wars he was raised with, and saw for the first time in the theater; it was formative for him. My oldest son first really saw Star Wars when the Special Editions hit theaters, so he comes somewhere in between his younger brother and me.
I've never given up on Star Wars, though obviously there's little good to be said about the sequel trilogy and much of the Disney output. It took me a long time to even see Rogue 1, but I recognized it was something special, and Andor even moreso. (Though I will admit I like eps. 2 and 3 of the prequel trilogy more than I did at first.)
I think it's probably even truer of TV series than films that you can't really go home again. But then I'm probably forgetting various Disney and other films that I probably loved as a kid that I'd find it torture to sit through today.
IDK, I feel like good kids movies tend to stay good into adulthood. Presumably you wouldn't feel like it's torture to sit through something like the Lion King (the original of course) as an adult? Like I'm not saying they're amazing movies, but I feel like good kids movies aren't painful for adults to watch. You can still have good writing, it just has to be something a kid can follow.
Sophisticated animation can play at multiple levels. Certainly a lot of Disney and Pixar (OK now Disney). Warner Brothers cartoons.
Some stuff this is true with, but other stuff can age better. I loved MASH as a kid (huge props to the writers for pulling that off), but it's side-splitting as an adult.
Certainly one of the great series. I think a lot of 60s sitcoms probably age less well.
Just FYI, MASH was 70s into early 80s, not 60s.
Very aware of that. And probably 70s hold up better than 60s but with a little bit of research could probably come up with cringeworthy 70s and 80s examples to (of which MASH is certainly not one).
I agree with most of what you're saying—that much of it is driven by nostalgia, and it's not worth getting super worked up about these things, and it's fine for people to like whatever they like—but if you do want to get into a discussion about art and the relative merits of these shows, there are good arguments that the originals executed on things like character and plot that the prequels just didn't. Red Letter Media did the best review series on why exactly the prequels felt so unsatisfying to so many people, and it's more than just preference and has to do with blunders in fundamental aspects of storytelling. All of that said it's totally fine for people to like them, and you're right that there are better things to fret over.
I enjoyed the Red Letter Media series but felt it was unfair on the Prequels (which is fine, RLM is still a great series.) I ended up watching the OT a bit after Episode 2 and found them to be just as campy and flaw filled as the Prequels just in different places. But this has been litigated to death on the net since Usenet days so I'm not sure if we're gonna break new ground here (:
Oh yea, critiquing movies is fun as hell, and with a franchise like star wars there's basically endless opportunity for it. I basically think Phantom Menace gets way too much critique, Clone Wars/A New Hope/Return of the Jedi don't get enough. Empire Strikes Back is really good, and whatever the third movie is was just kind of bland and depressing(it has some of the best action sequences of the series, but Padmé should have featured more strongly before dying offscreen.)
But there's a reason why the star wars fandom has such a stank reputation, and it's 100% because adult men care way too much about something meant for children to a quite creepy extent. Two things immediately come to mind: 1) the explicit and physical sexualization of Leia, which I understand but definitely don't think was necessary in retrospect (at least not so ham-handedly), and 2) the abuse of the guy who did the Jar Jar Binks voice acting. It's not his fault Lucas wrote the character as a moronic alien speaking patois. I wasn't aware of the abuse until long after it was over, but I adored jar jar binks as an eight year old boy and didn't understand why he was thereafter sidelined. This makes me also question whether criticisms by adults of the new content is a reflection of what we actually loved growing up. Could a character as weird as Yoda make it into a film now without catering much stronger to people eager to deconstruct him into eg orientalist stereotypes? Would Luke really be allowed to kiss his sister? Would Han Solo be allowed to shoot first, really?
Even the sexualization of Leia—look I'm into pulp fiction, I understand what shallow sexual stereotypes can deliver in terms of entertainment, it wasn't and still isn't crazy. You can see the same phenomenon in the current explosion of mass-published erotica ("romance"). But the stories I've heard about what Fisher was subjected to make me look at the fandom with pretty severe prejudice. It makes nerds look bad, and I also think the success of Indiana Jones shows that this wasn't necessary. It's also not the easiest thing to explain to a child or teenager who grasps something of the power dynamic between Jabba the Hutt and Leia but doesn't have the social knowledge or, frankly, cynicism to make the sense of it we do as adults.
> the abuse of the guy who did the Jar Jar Binks voice acting. It's not his fault Lucas wrote the character as a moronic alien speaking patois.
Season 2 of the ILM documentary on D+ goes into this, it’s a really fascinating documentary for folks into special effects and/or star wars.
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.
As someone who’s starting reading non-jedi Star Wars books, I realized that Jedis are just a splash in the ocean. There’s Thrawn universe, Battlefront, Rebel era, X-wings, Bad Batch, too many to mention.
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.
Lol ok calm down. I agree with your quality assessment broadly, but I just finished Andor and it's excellent.
It's barely star wars. It's a competent spy thriller with star wars paint.
Turns out that makes for pretty good adult oriented star wars.
Tony Gilroy's mentioned a lot of influences on Andor, few if any of which had anything to do with Star Wars. Off the top of my head:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Shadows
To add to this, non-exhaustively, from various other places including reddit:
Krennic's meeting on kalkite:
* structured like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference
* takes place at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kehlsteinhaus
the Aldhani heist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Tiflis_bank_robbery
Ferrix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles
Vel Sartha:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Dugdale
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolours_Price
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
Kleya Marki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Inayat_Khan
the Dhanis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_people#Discriminatio...
escape from Narkina 5:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_Prison_escape
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen_concentration_camp
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobibor_uprising
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrba%E2%80%93Wetzler_report
Rix Road:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporals_killings
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh#Funeral
Mon Mothma's speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Wels#Speech_in_opposition
Ghormans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance
Ghorman massacre:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabaa_massacre
* and perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_weavers%27_uprising
Obviously the comparisons aren't exact, but it's clear the show had a great many sources of inspiration (or maybe history rhymes as it always has).
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.
Star Wars is barely Star Wars: it's just Flash Gordon and Dam Busters with Star Wars paint.
You can't escape your influences, and you don't need to.
"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.
It’s a different beast. For me, there’s too many things in Andor that don’t fit conceptually, logically or tonally with the original trilogy. So if you like the world building the OT did and/or hinted at, Andor might not come through on that. Of course, the prequel trilogy (again quite a different beast) had similar issues.
The prequels are trying to do what Andor does well, including a more political focus. But Andor just blows it out of the Naboo water.
For me it fits perfectly well if you're coming at it from the perspective of people in the same universe who've never seen a Jedi or the Emperor in their lives.
Yes, it's easy to view Lucas' films with a rose-tinted lens, but try and watch them now and you see: poor acting, poor writing, one-dimensional characters and plot points.
And by far the coolest looking spaceships ever seen in any medium. The production design was incredible.
At least X-Wings, TIE Fighters, Corellian Corvettes, Imperial Shuttles and Star Destroyers. Not a fan of the Millennium Falcon tbh.
The TIE Avenger starship [1] in the series seems incredible. I cannot find the official toy.
Yes indeed, looks really damn cool.
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I didn't think we loved it for the acting, but the production and world building which Lucas excels at IMO.
And the John Williams soundtrack.
The acting is perfect for the campy story Lucas was trying to tell.
Word of warning, because there is just so much praise online about it, it is a very slow burn. I gave up on first season half way through. I picked it up again after first season was fully out because of all the good reviews and was happy that I finished.
I recently rewatched season one in preparation for season two with my partner who hadn't watched it, and she wanted to give up around the same point I did previously and only powered through for the same reason. She was also happy that she finished
To your second question, yes. Andor would be exactly the wrong one to bail on if you’ve made it through those others.
Andor bailed on a Bail, ended up having Bail on twice.
The only Star Wars worth watching as an adult is Andor.
> 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 prefer good static heads vs poor walking and talking. Didn't notice the prior to be a problem in Andor.
I felt like The Mandalorian was a step above its nearest best of Star Wars TV. Andor is a step above that.
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".
I watched two or three episodes of The Mandalorian and was very underwhelmed. Childishly simplistic plot, but much too violent to be a kid’s show. (Although now I say that, I guess the original movies are both childish and violent.)
There’s a bit where the main character very obviously levels up and gets to choose a power-up. Then he sees somebody else with a different power-up and goes “wow, I should get one of those”. That confirmed to me that it wanted to be a videogame rather than a serious drama.
Mandalorian started out strong and got progressively worse with each episode. Don't even bother with season 3.
Agreed. First couple of episodes are so good, when I was watching it really felt like the magic from watching EpIV again, as everything felt like being introduced to a new culture far away.
It really nails the feeling of watching an old Western movie where a cowboy bonds with an innocent person who needs protection against all odds.
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.
As far as I'm concerned, The Mandalorian started out silly (Manadalorian honor code / the fucking helmet!), disjointed and boring, then there was that garbage episode where he randomly defends a village from Bad Guys, then I gave up on it.
Andor is good and you can almost ignore that it's Star Wars universe.
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.
Andor is the best Star Wars that Disney has made
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.
If you thought Rogue One was cool, then yes you should definitely try Andor.
I would honestly rate Andor up there with A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. It’s the top tier, for sure.
I think for older fans we don’t get it. My son is 15 and grew up with the animated series, for him that’s peak Star Wars and I think he’s right. His buddies really loved Rogue One. The magic is its simplicity.
I think like the Asimov books, Star Wars is best as fantasy history. The forward looking ones (that horrific “final” trilogy) are just awkward stories.
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.)
I agree with you 100%. I found it interesting that in this particular circle of kids, they rate the attack of the clones much higher, as the animated series is kind of a “Star Wars home” to them.
Any way you cut it, it’s really cool how people consume them in different ways, and there’s enough material that over time we can just discard garbage like 8 hours of walking through the desert.
Attack of the Clones is IMO not bad. Had Phantom Menace (and Jar Jar) not poisoned the well so to speak, I'm not sure the prequel trilogy would be as vilified as it is. Have never watched the animated series.
Personally, I rate the midichlorians much higher as poison than Jar Jar, who could be safely ignored in subsequent movies anyway.
Everyone gushing over Rogue One... but it was at best barely competent.
10-20 minutes of static talking heads, 5 minutes of mediocre action. Repeat until the end. Meaningless side-quests. The final is a thousand cliches one after another culminating in a "main computer at the end of a rickety walkway" and "a kiss at the sunset".
The only reason it's hailed as the greatest movie ever is because so much of the Star Wars is just objectively shit.
> a kiss at the sunset
They don't kiss.
And that's not a sunset.
You know exactly what I mean. It couldn't have been more predictable, cheezy and cliched if it was and actual kiss at the sunset
I know what you mean and I completely disagree. It's a subversion a standard trope. Moreover, the fraternal relationship between the two leads is a reference to Andor's arc in Andor. It's an ending about sacrifice that wouldn't make sense in any other context.
> It's a subversion a standard trope.
There's nothing subversive.
> It's an ending about sacrifice that wouldn't make sense in any other context.
There are a million ways to make an ending about sacrifice. Rogue One chose the worst one, after a lot of other ridiculous choices
Yeah, it’s honestly hard to find a weak element. The actors are all great, the music is great (with an interesting progression from electronic to orchestral), the set design is incredible. It’s both timeless and topical.
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> The cinematography, editing, writing, and overall feel of this show far exceed any Star Wars movie I've seen.
Yes, but by sucking big. The story is nonexistent, the scenes with children do not blend in the story, the story is boring as hell.