Andor (Star Wars: Andor) - Disney+

[sh9000]

Season 2 Episodes 7-9 Declassified.

 

[Mog]

Also, looks like Wilmon has a type. 😅

[Mog]

Can’t take credit for transcribing this.  

But yeah, the message will stick:

Spoiler

Fellow Senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries. I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I've spent my life in this chamber. I came here as a child. And as I look around me now, I realize I have almost no memories that pre-date my arrival and few bonds of affection that cleave so tightly. Through these many years, I believe I have served my constituents honorably and upheld our code of conduct. This chamber is a cauldron of opinions and we've certainly all had our patience and tempers tested in pursuit of our ideals. Disagree as we might I am hopeful that those of you who know me will vouch for my credibility in the days to come. I stand this morning with a difficult message.

I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Chamber's hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this Chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we helped create?

The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!

 

[Duke Togo]

There was a moment during last night's three-episode arc where I wondered to myself if this was the best Star Wars has ever been.

[Mog]

Maybe not the absolute best, but it’s definitely shot itself up to the upper echelons of damn good Star Wars.

[tekering]

2 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

There was a moment during last night's three-episode arc where I wondered to myself if this was the best Star Wars has ever been.

I came to that impression back on Aldani, and the whole Ghorman arc has confirmed it.  I don't think there's any question.

Maybe if The Empire Strikes Back had been over twenty hours long, it could've been as dramatic as Andor has proven to be...

 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

There was a moment during last night's three-episode arc where I wondered to myself if this was the best Star Wars has ever been.

Andor has always been among the very best Star Wars has had to offer... IMO, it crossed the line to being The Best back in "One Way Out" and cemented its permanent residency in the top spot with "Rix Road".  

Haven't seen the new episodes yet (that's tonight), but I am VERY much looking forward to it.  

[Mog]

The one-two punch of the prison escape then Luthen’s awesome monologue sent it to another level.

And who’d have thought they’d make compelling, layered characters out of cereal-eating Syril and typical, rank-climbing antagonist Dedra?

Even the minor characters are well developed.

[Seto Kaiba]

If I could change any one thing, I'd have kept the F-bomb in the conclusion of Maarva's speech in "Rix Road".  

[Roy Focker]

Andor = The actual historic events of the Star Wars from eons long ago. 

Original Trilogy = The mythology legends of the Star Wars passed down through the eons to our modern day.

Prequels, Sequels & Everything else = A modern reinterpretation of those Star Wars bedtime stories now for a new young and hip audience.

[jvmacross]

10 hours ago, Mog said:

Can’t take credit for transcribing this.  

But yeah, the message will stick:

  Reveal hidden contents

Fellow Senators, friends, colleagues, allies, adversaries. I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I've spent my life in this chamber. I came here as a child. And as I look around me now, I realize I have almost no memories that pre-date my arrival and few bonds of affection that cleave so tightly. Through these many years, I believe I have served my constituents honorably and upheld our code of conduct. This chamber is a cauldron of opinions and we've certainly all had our patience and tempers tested in pursuit of our ideals. Disagree as we might I am hopeful that those of you who know me will vouch for my credibility in the days to come. I stand this morning with a difficult message.

I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Chamber's hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Plaza. What took place yesterday, what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes! Genocide! And that truth has been exiled from this Chamber! And the monster screaming the loudest? The monster we helped create?

The monster who will come for us all soon enough is Emperor Palpatine!

 

Timely...

[sh9000]

 

[azrael]

My only complaint about the Ghorman scenes were, in particular, the city plaza felt too small to be a city square. I know they made a 500 sq ft set at Pinewood Studios but was there no other location in the world that would have made a more grander city square? For a city that dominates an entire entrance to a valley, that city square felt more like a town square. It felt more the size of the Cour Carrée outside of the Lourve Museum in Paris and less like a Millennium Park in Chicago or New Have Green in Connecticut. I felt it should have been bigger.

[Seto Kaiba]

My group just finished watching Andor's latest batch of episodes about 30min or so ago...

That was INCREDIBLE.

I am blown away.  Just absolutely jaw-on-the-floor blown away.   

 

17 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

There was a moment during last night's three-episode arc where I wondered to myself if this was the best Star Wars has ever been.

Having now watched it myself, I have to ask... "Just one?"

Andor has, in my opinion, firmly cemented its position as the single best Star Wars series ever made and combined with Rogue One the best Star Wars story ever told.

To hell with the moral absolutes of the glowstick enthusiast society... this is where Star Wars should focus its efforts.  Not on high-and-mighty space monks fighting battles over destiny and prophecy, but on the regular people of the galaxy struggling against tyranny and oppression.  This series stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the very best of Star Trek in terms of socially aware and relevant allegory and commentary.  This hit like a sledgehammer.  

I do love that they took the time to, very quietly and subtly, tie Mon Mothma's escape into the Rebels episode by mentioning Gold Squadron had been dispatched to escort her to Yavin IV.  They didn't make a meal out of it or use it for cameos, but the connection is there.

[tekering]

2 hours ago, azrael said:

My only complaint about the Ghorman scenes were, in particular, the city plaza felt too small to be a city square.

Even worse, they claim that the plaza (where the monument to the Tarkin Massacre stands) is where 500 protestors were killed when Tarkin landed his ship on top of them...

Where and how could you land a ship that big in a space that small? 🤔

We know that the circular terrace that surrounds the plaza was erected before the event, since it's clearly visible in the promotional video the ISB officers watch in episode 7.  The monument is conspicuously absent from the plaza in the video, dating it prior to the Tarkin Massacre.

The geography makes no damn sense. 🤨

[Duke Togo]

4 hours ago, tekering said:

The geography makes no damn sense. 🤨

Who cares?

[pengbuzz]

9 hours ago, azrael said:

My only complaint about the Ghorman scenes were, in particular, the city plaza felt too small to be a city square. I know they made a 500 sq ft set at Pinewood Studios but was there no other location in the world that would have made a more grander city square? For a city that dominates an entire entrance to a valley, that city square felt more like a town square. It felt more the size of the Cour Carrée outside of the Lourve Museum in Paris and less like a Millennium Park in Chicago or New Have Green in Connecticut. I felt it should have been bigger.

You've been to New Haven? O.o

[Roy Focker]

I tried watching that episode of Rebel for the first time. I just couldn't. The animation is ugly. Character designs are atrocious and nothing moves like it should. Dialog and story is too juvenile.

I refuse to believe Andor is in the same universe as the cartoons or even the other Disney plus shows. Their tones are completely different. Their rules are completely different.

 

[electric indigo]

I have not been so breathlessly hooked to the screen since the golden days of GoT fandom. The last arc was the epic cherry on a cake of epic.

On a side note:

How it started --> how it's going

[Duke Togo]

3 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

I refuse to believe Andor is in the same universe as the cartoons or even the other Disney plus shows. Their tones are completely different. Their rules are completely different.

This is why I don't like Filoni being put in charge of all things Star Wars.

[Duke Togo]

Has anyone else been holding off on rewatching Rogue One since the first season came out? 
 

Next week I'll be watching all three final episodes on Tuesday night, and will be watching Rogue One on Wednesday.

[Duke Togo]

@Roy Focker you might find this of interest: https://ew.com/why-andor-diverged-from-canon-mon-mothmas-epic-senate-speech-11729531

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

I tried watching that episode of Rebel for the first time. I just couldn't. The animation is ugly. Character designs are atrocious and nothing moves like it should. Dialog and story is too juvenile.

Not a surprising outcome.

The difference in tone between the very much for-adults Andor and the more conventional all-ages writing of Rebels is massive.  Doubly so since Andor, like Rogue One is largely devoid of the Jedi-centric shenanigans that bring most of the lighter and more kid-friendly fantasy elements into Star Wars stories like rigid Good/Evil alignments and blaster fire being treated like a nuisance rather than a life-ending threat.

 

5 hours ago, Roy Focker said:

I refuse to believe Andor is in the same universe as the cartoons or even the other Disney plus shows. Their tones are completely different. Their rules are completely different.

The rules aren't really different, IMO.  Andor, being aimed at a more mature audience, differs from more conventional Star Wars titles in that it leaves the ugliness and trauma of the war on full display instead of hiding it with reaction shots, cutaways, and the like.

Rebels has moments just as ugly as Andor's, but they happen "just offscreen" to keep the violence kid-friendly.  For example, the Grand Inquisitor is introduced in Rebels when he simultaneously beheads two bumbling Imperial officers with his lightsaber.  It's very clear contextually what happened, and everyone but Tarkin is visibly horrified, but they don't actually show the lethal blow or the headless bodies to keep the show's content rating down.  Rebels also had a fairly direct depiction of a much more total genocide, but it didn't land quite as hard because we only see the aftermath, the victims were the bug-aliens from Attack of the Clones, and the traumatized sole survivor of a planetary genocide didn't speak English.

 

1 hour ago, Duke Togo said:

This is why I don't like Filoni being put in charge of all things Star Wars.

Yeah, Filoni's work is passable most of the time but he's too much of a fanboy to be an effective creator on the franchise.

His shows run primarily, if not exclusively, on fanservice.  The new Tales of the Underworld series is a perfect example.  Filoni penned two three-episode story arcs around a pair of hilariously one-dimensional recurring minor villains from his Star Wars: the Clone Wars series.  Neither story is compelling or even interesting, and both of them read like they were written specifically to pad out that character's Star Wars Fandom wiki page rather than tell an engaging story.

I will admit, I'm actually kind of curious whether this franchise-wise preoccupation with Filoni's work is because the franchise has too many "promoted" fans working on it or if Filoni is just that convinced that he's a great creator.

[Roy Focker]

2 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

@Roy Focker you might find this of interest: https://ew.com/why-andor-diverged-from-canon-mon-mothmas-epic-senate-speech-11729531

Quote

"In canon, she's rescued by the Gold Squadron and the speech that they gave in the cartoon, which was a canonical show, [is on that ship]. And Danny's like, 'Do I have to stick to this f--ing speech?'"

That's from the interview. It goes on saying how they tried to make everything work together. For that I say they didn't need to pay lip service to established canon. If bulldozing over canon makes your story better. Go right ahead. Star War was first live action. When it is appropriate retell key events in live action they should.

I'm not saying Filoni, and his cartoons are that bad. They are good for what they are. What I'm saying is what works for one type of medium doesn't work for another. With a New Hope we have that Movie, a Radio Play, a Comic Book, a Novel and Video game all telling the same story. Each of them in their own unique way. Some do it better than others. With Movie being the best version. Since that's how it was intended.

There are different requirements for what makes a good cartoon and what makes a good TV show. Filoni doesn't believe that or is simply too attached to his own creations. Everything doesn't have to be like Andor. I enjoyed Skeleton Crew, and it was nothing like Andor. Everything doesn't have to link back to cartoons. Third season of the Mandalorian really suffered in my opinion because of fan service to Filoni's clone wars. Lessons we learned in the season One and Two of the Mandalorian was that Din's clan was toxic cult. For the good of his adopted son, he would have to reject them. All that was ignored because in the cartoon a bunch Mandalorian running around doing things the Mandalorian way is super cool. When Mandalorian culture is shown in something closer to real life you think, these people need therapy. We then have Ahsoka. Where they solve interpersonal character conflicts the same way they would in a cartoon. I look at their solutions and think no that doesn't solve your issues.

Filoni, if you want to write for grownups you will need to put away all cartoon DVDs back on the shelf. Write something new. Break your own canon if you need to. I'd like to see him try making something live action that isn't even Star War related. All the other directors that Disney hire to make Star Wars, or a Marvel movie first proved themselves by either decades of work or a something semi-recent that got people talking. Filoni's resume just reads that he made some fan favorite cartoons. That experience doesn't always translate to live action.

Okay I'm done on this long rant.

Really going to miss Andor when it over. I like seeing them try new things. How about a situation comedy based on Bea Arthur's bar tender character? Recast them all with living actors. Add Dexter as the cook. Jar-Jar can be a waiter. Each week they stay one step of head of both the Empire, Jabba's goons and health inspector. A terrible idea for the show but it would be something different. 

[Duke Togo]

Holy cow, Elizabeth Dulau, who plays Luthen's assistant Kleya, was hired into the role right after she graduated from drama school. Andor was her first on-screen role. She's been fantastic.

[Hikuro]

Personally I still rather enjoy Rebels, I mean for me it's Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi, Underground, Droids, Ewok's, Visions.................then Resistance (see what i did there?) They just have different tones and restrictions to what they can do and budgets and broadcasting compared to streaming services and live action. But I still like it.

Overall though I've absolutely adored this season, if anything I love LOVE L O V E the set designs, the backgrounds, the atmosphere, the overall esthetics being used compared to the first season and overall the live action shows in general. The odd thing though is when the Senate building is shown....in the prequels it was felt like it was smacked dab in the middle of a giant city, almost swallowed up. But in many shots of Andor, it's the complete opposite. I'm not sure if I'm articulating the differences accurately, but like lets say in Andor's version of area, it's like I'm looking at the Apple campus, very white, very open, modern, no buildings in sight. It's sort of odd considering Courscant is just one giant towering city of buildings and skyscrapers and speeders and ships. 

[pengbuzz]

2 minutes ago, Hikuro said:

Personally I still rather enjoy Rebels, I mean for me it's Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch, Tales of the Jedi, Underground, Droids, Ewok's, Visions.................then Resistance (see what i did there?) They just have different tones and restrictions to what they can do and budgets and broadcasting compared to streaming services and live action. But I still like it.

Overall though I've absolutely adored this season, if anything I love LOVE L O V E the set designs, the backgrounds, the atmosphere, the overall esthetics being used compared to the first season and overall the live action shows in general. The odd thing though is when the Senate building is shown....in the prequels it was felt like it was smacked dab in the middle of a giant city, almost swallowed up. But in many shots of Andor, it's the complete opposite. I'm not sure if I'm articulating the differences accurately, but like lets say in Andor's version of area, it's like I'm looking at the Apple campus, very white, very open, modern, no buildings in sight. It's sort of odd considering Courscant is just one giant towering city of buildings and skyscrapers and speeders and ships. 

I wonder if the buildings surrounding it were removed/ relocated somehow?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Roy Focker said:

Third season of the Mandalorian really suffered in my opinion because of fan service to Filoni's clone wars. Lessons we learned in the season One and Two of the Mandalorian was that Din's clan was toxic cult. For the good of his adopted son, he would have to reject them. All that was ignored because in the cartoon a bunch Mandalorian running around doing things the Mandalorian way is super cool. When Mandalorian culture is shown in something closer to real life you think, these people need therapy.

In all fairness, even the cartoons (esp. The Clone Wars) make it very clear that even in-story Mandalorian warrior culture is considered insanely toxic and self-destructive at best by anyone who's not in one of their feuding warrior cults.  WRT the ignored epiphany from the end of season two of The Mandalorian, it probably doesn't help that the only survivors of Mandalore are the crazies.  The reasonable folks got nuked.

Fans just tend to... overlook... that little detail because Mandalorians are very action figure-friendly.

 

1 hour ago, Roy Focker said:

We then have Ahsoka. Where they solve interpersonal character conflicts the same way they would in a cartoon. I look at their solutions and think no that doesn't solve your issues.

The series as a whole is a direct sequel to a cartoon... it doesn't excuse the cartoon logic, but it explains why the writers fell into that trap in the first place.

[Big s]

Took a bit to get around to finishing. Unfortunately I only was able to watch one episode on Tuesday and they have been doing work on the lines around here, so the WiFi has been down mostly the last couple days. 
the first one out of this bunch was another set up kinda thing that this season seems to have a lot of. I really don’t like the batch set up they have, because it always hints at something interesting that must’ve happened that you didn’t get to see, but everyone talks about it as though things that happened were really interesting and probably more interesting than the start over episodes.

the second episode of this batch was far better and definitely the best episode of the season. It’s a little clunky here and there, but overall pretty good. Sets up a lot of tension and

Spoiler

 Cereal boy seems to have grown up a lot. It’s interesting to see that he has totally realized that the empire is evil, even if he made that decision to try and swap in a new girlfriend.

it does seem odd that the rebels really only seem to have gotten away with maybe ten blasters after that hijacking at the end of the last batch.

the genocide seemed to have just been a minor massacre since most people appeared to have escaped pretty easily after the Gus with guns opened up an escape route.

It was definitely a showing of how much more fragile people are in this where a pet could be thrown against a wall and die, while other shows they could survive being run through by a lightsaber, sometimes multiple times.

Kind of a bummer that Cereal got shot in the head when it kinda seemed like he might actually switch sides.

Third episode of the bunch was kind of a mixed bag. It started out with a lot of tension, but ended kinda soft 

Spoiler

The speech was rather brief, but didn’t really feel super convincing to anyone that wasn’t already on her side. But it gets the point across.

the escape though was kinda sloppy feeling. Like they built up a bunch of tension for things to go awkwardly smooth, even though the description for the episode said it was gonna be a difficult exit. I guess those stairs were pretty tough.

they totally got away with murdering a security lady in front of a dozen witnesses and another guard standing by and then the driver of the limo comes up and Andor pops him for good measure in front of others that didn’t seem to care with others that didn’t even hear that gunshot only a few feet away on the stairs and no one went to even check on the limo driver.

later we even find that the guy that killed the lady also got away somehow with ease. The action direction in this show is definitely a weak point in this season.

 

Overall not a bad batch, but that second episode really worked the best out of them. Hopefully the final batch is good and doesn’t rely on the set up starter again. I think we’ve had enough of those and can finally get to the end without all that and hopefully no more teasing things that happened off screen 

[sh9000]

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, Big s said:

the first one out of this bunch was another set up kinda thing that this season seems to have a lot of. I really don’t like the batch set up they have, because it always hints at something interesting that must’ve happened that you didn’t get to see, but everyone talks about it as though things that happened were really interesting and probably more interesting than the start over episodes.

It really doesn't.  They allude to non-specific events happening during the timeskips between episodes but it's never anything of real significance.  Like the last trio, where the only real detail of relevance is that Bix was traumatized because they had to shoot an innocent bystander who saw their faces during a covert op to avoid being identified.  How that'd come to pass doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is how the memory is affecting Bix.  They never hint that anything important happened during those time skips, just their bog-standard operations.

 

18 minutes ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

Cereal boy seems to have grown up a lot. It’s interesting to see that he has totally realized that the empire is evil, even if he made that decision to try and swap in a new girlfriend.

[...]

Kind of a bummer that Cereal got shot in the head when it kinda seemed like he might actually switch sides.

Spoiler

Syril Karn definitely did some growing up in his time as an ISB plant in the Ghorman Front.

It's very doubtful that he came to a sweeping conclusion like "The Empire is Evil".  What he's upset about in the episode is the realization that they lied to him too.  He'd spent the last year-plus of his life feeding vetted intel to the Ghorman Front in the belief that he was helping the ISB expose and arrest foreign agents provocateur who'd come to a peaceful planet to create civil unrest where none previously existed.  He believed he was serving the pursuit of justice. 

What ultimately breaks him is the realization that the ISB's plan was never to expose outside agitators and restore peace.  That he was the foreign agent provocateur, sent in by the ISB rather than the Rebels, to steer the Ghormans into creating the pretext for an Imperial occupation of the planet for the sake of some other goal (mining).  That his blind belief in the law equaling justice once again destroyed everything around him.

 

No way was he going to switch sides, though.  It's particularly blatant given that they're on planet Space France, but Syril Karn is basically Inspector Javert to Cassian's Jean Valjean.  He's devoted his career to tracking down this one small-time criminal turned rebel operator.  Had he not been stunned rigid by the realization that his nemesis who'd ruined his career and his life twice (or so he believed) had no idea who he even was and subsequently taken one to the dome, he'd probably have launched onto a longwinded accusatory speech assuming Cassian was the outside agitator behind the Ghorman Front that he'd been trying to find.

 

39 minutes ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

the genocide seemed to have just been a minor massacre since most people appeared to have escaped pretty easily after the Gus with guns opened up an escape route.

Spoiler

Given that the event becomes known as the (capital emphasis) Ghorman Massacre, eclipsing the previous event where Tarkin killed 500 men, women, and children when he landed his ship on top of them, we can safely assume that the Imperial operation didn't stop with what we saw onscreen and that the death toll was far higher than the ~500 killed in the Tarkin Massacre.

 

52 minutes ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

the escape though was kinda sloppy feeling. Like they built up a bunch of tension for things to go awkwardly smooth, even though the description for the episode said it was gonna be a difficult exit. I guess those stairs were pretty tough.

they totally got away with murdering a security lady in front of a dozen witnesses and another guard standing by and then the driver of the limo comes up and Andor pops him for good measure in front of others that didn’t seem to care with others that didn’t even hear that gunshot only a few feet away on the stairs and no one went to even check on the limo driver.

later we even find that the guy that killed the lady also got away somehow with ease. The action direction in this show is definitely a weak point in this season.

Spoiler

It did seem too easy at first... but then I stopped to consider how gobsmackingly huge the Senate building actually is.

The Senate Rotunda on Coruscant is said to be more than 2 kilometers across.  Whether that's the central stalk or the "mushroom cap" on top, that means the Senate has at least one individual floor with an area of more than 3.14 square kilometers.  The largest football stadium in the US has an architectural footprint of 0.06 square kilometers.  That's at least one floor of the building with an area equivalent to 52 Michigan Stadiums.  One single floor.

The Senate is also supposedly multiple kilometers tall.  If we assume a uniform 10-12ft ceiling like what we see on the series, the building would have around 182 floors for every kilometer of height.  If we assume that central "stalk" of the building is about 1km across, each floor would have an area of almost 786,000 square meters (a hair over 13 Michigan Stadiums).  182 floors of that is 143 square kilometers, slightly more area than the entire city of San Francisco (121.5 square kilometers).  The Senate looks to be at least 2km tall, given its diameter exceeds 2km, suggesting this is a building with a floorplan exceeding the area of the entire city of Detroit (370 square km). 

For three relatively nondescript humans to escape detection and make their way out of the building literally the size of a large city undetected feels quite a bit more reasonable.

 

[Big s]

42 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It did seem too easy at first... but then I stopped to consider how gobsmackingly huge the Senate building actually is

I don’t think that really matters, they easily could’ve locked down better and posted soldiers or more security around cars, especially a car belonging to the person they were specifically targeting 

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, Big s said:

I don’t think that really matters, they easily could’ve locked down better and posted soldiers or more security around cars, especially a car belonging to the person they were specifically targeting 

There's no way the Empire could lock down a building that size on short/no notice quickly... it's literally the size of a city, and not only are there a bunch of ground level entrances and exits, there's an extensive ring of landing pads on the upper levels too.  They'd need to move a literal army onsite to cut off every possible entrance and exit point.  Keeping a literal army nearby or onsite would definitely strain relations between the Emperor and the Senators too, since at that point he was still maintaining the illusion that the Senate is wielding its own power.  (The difficulty of securing the Senate building comes up several times in The Clone Wars too.)

Mind you, the ISB were also at low readiness because they were convinced she'd be unable to speak due to the day's schedule being set... and even if she managed, they thought she'd be easy to detain and arrest since she's a vocal pacifist.  She's not at all the type of person to have armed agents ready to shoot their way out of the building with her. 

[Duke Togo]

Man, for all these years, I confused Gareth Edwards (director of Rogue One) with Gareth Evans (director of The Raid). I legitimately thought they were the same guy.

[Big s]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

There's no way the Empire could lock down a building that size on short/no notice quickly... it's literally the size of a city, and not only are there a bunch of ground level entrances and exits, there's an extensive ring of landing pads on the upper levels too.  They'd need to move a literal army onsite to cut off every possible entrance and exit point.  Keeping a literal army nearby or onsite would definitely strain relations between the Emperor and the Senators too, since at that point he was still maintaining the illusion that the Senate is wielding its own power.  (The difficulty of securing the Senate building comes up several times in The Clone Wars too.)

Mind you, the ISB were also at low readiness because they were convinced she'd be unable to speak due to the day's schedule being set... and even if she managed, they thought she'd be easy to detain and arrest since she's a vocal pacifist.  She's not at all the type of person to have armed agents ready to shoot their way out of the building with her. 

It wouldn’t be that hard. It’s a senate building and would already have had plenty of security and it wasn’t a riot situation, so a lockdown would have been very easy. It took them forever getting from that first door to the car, they should have been ready after reporting a security personnel murder