Andor (Star Wars: Andor) - Disney+

[jvmacross]

Now I demand to know why so many Bothans died....

[sh9000]

Beautiful.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

My group just finished Andor S2 Ep10-12.

Honestly, just cancel the other Disney+ Star Wars shows at this point.  Tony Gilroy and Andor have set the bar unfeasibly, unachievably, insurmountably high in a single Herculean work of cinematic mastery.  This is an unfollowable act.  Andor should be the model for future Star Wars stories.  We have no need of the Jedi and the Sith, their lightsabers and heavy-handed talk of destiny and moral absolutes.  This authentic, human drama about regular people living in the Star Wars universe has far more impact than anything else the franchise has done besides Rogue One.   

Like, I were working on one of the other in-development Disney+ Star Wars titles right now I'd be sweating bullets because this is what every other Disney+ Star Wars show will be compared to going forward.  Hopefully the critics will have some perspective and not simply murder the next series for not being on Andor's level.

[jvmacross]

When Star Wars actually caters to the OG (rapidly aging) Star Wars fans...you get Andor.....when Star Wars wants to force (pun intended) itself upon the preferred demographics or even the original, non-existant demographics (kids)...you get everything else.....Acolyte and Space Pirates....both trash in their own way....one failed because it alienated half their audience...the other failed because kids don't give a sh!t about Star Wars....

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, jvmacross said:

When Star Wars actually caters to the OG (rapidly aging) Star Wars fans...you get Andor.....when Star Wars wants to force (pun intended) itself upon the preferred demographics or even the original, non-existant demographics (kids)...you get everything else.....Acolyte and Space Pirates....both trash in their own way....one failed because it alienated half their audience...the other failed because kids don't give a sh!t about Star Wars....

Nah, that's not quite right IMO.

Disney has been fairly consistent in trying to keep Disney+ Star Wars titles at least as family-friendly as the Star Wars main series movies. 

However, only a few titles are actually made specifically for children.  That's your LEGO Star Wars titles and Young Jedi Adventures, and arguably Skeleton Crew.

Most of their output is nostalgia-driven, fanservice-based material that's aimed at an audience with fond memories of the Prequel Trilogy.  Filoni's shows are practically all based on his The Clone Wars cartoon from 2008.  Rebels and The Bad Batch are both direct sequels to The Clone Wars.  With, I think, one exception the three seasons of Tales of are all prequels or sequels to specific character arcs from The Clone Wars and/or the prequels.  Most of the stuff about Mandalorians in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett is from The Clone Wars and supported by Rebels, particularly the darksaber and Mando's weird cult.  Obi-Wan Kenobi is built on fandom's profound affection for Ewan McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the prequels and the character's sassmaster role in The Clone Wars.  They're not aimed at kids, they're capitalizing on the nostalgia of people who were kids (or die-hard fans) in the 2000s when the prequels and The Clone Wars were new.

The Acolyte is one major exception there in that it's not directly tied into any pre-existing movie or series.  It's a tie-in to an ongoing Expanded Universe multimedia project instead, and suffered badly from being run by a promoted fan who was a devotee of that specific part of Star Wars history.

Andor, though... Andor is what happens when Disney stops trying to pander to Star Wars's aging audience with promoted fans writing glorified fan fiction in an attempt to set the Guinness record for most franchise references per minute of screen time and, instead, hires talented non-fan creators from outside to develop and tell a character-focused story for more than just Star Wars fans.

[jvmacross]

4 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Andor, though... Andor is what happens when Disney stops trying to pander to Star Wars's aging audience....

Nah...Andor definitely still panders, but not in the way practically every other SW TV show does....essentially relying on it to an absurd amount and hoping it distracts from poor writing or worse, an unnecessary story like Obi Wan....

The Mandalorian, at least initially, also worked and also lives in the OG SW timeline....basically the time before the ST takes over...

Andor's showrunners made the difference....they respected the original source material and thoroughly understood their "demographic"....

[F-ZeroOne]

So, as much as I really enjoyed "Andor", there is one little thing thats been bugging me... and thats travel times. It seems like most of the locations visited are within a "days" travel from anywhere else. That doesn't bother me too much for, say Corsucant and Ghorman, but it does make it feel like a certain Rebel base is pretty damn close to the seat of Imperial power. It may just be because I remember how hyperspace worked in the old West End Games RPGs so it just feels a bit odd in comparison...

[Duke Togo]

21 minutes ago, F-ZeroOne said:

So, as much as I really enjoyed "Andor", there is one little thing thats been bugging me... and thats travel times. It seems like most of the locations visited are within a "days" travel from anywhere else. That doesn't bother me too much for, say Corsucant and Ghorman, but it does make it feel like a certain Rebel base is pretty damn close to the seat of Imperial power. It may just be because I remember how hyperspace worked in the old West End Games RPGs so it just feels a bit odd in comparison...

Come on, man. It's Star Wars. You don't think too hard about how hyperspace/light speed works.

[jvmacross]

39 minutes ago, F-ZeroOne said:

So, as much as I really enjoyed "Andor", there is one little thing thats been bugging me... and thats travel times. It seems like most of the locations visited are within a "days" travel from anywhere else. That doesn't bother me too much for, say Corsucant and Ghorman, but it does make it feel like a certain Rebel base is pretty damn close to the seat of Imperial power. It may just be because I remember how hyperspace worked in the old West End Games RPGs so it just feels a bit odd in comparison...

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-inside-intel-hyperspace

Edited Thursday at 07:20 PM by jvmacross

[Seto Kaiba]

37 minutes ago, F-ZeroOne said:

So, as much as I really enjoyed "Andor", there is one little thing thats been bugging me... and thats travel times. It seems like most of the locations visited are within a "days" travel from anywhere else. That doesn't bother me too much for, say Corsucant and Ghorman, but it does make it feel like a certain Rebel base is pretty damn close to the seat of Imperial power. It may just be because I remember how hyperspace worked in the old West End Games RPGs so it just feels a bit odd in comparison...

That seems to be the case for practically any hyperspace trip in Star Wars.

Jump cuts are used to preserve the flow of the story, but it definitely feels like Star Wars hyperdrives are so fast that you can get anywhere in the galaxy within a day or two.  Luke and Obi-Wan's trip to Alderaan in A New Hope seems to take only a few hours.  Anakin's trip from Tatooine to Coruscant in The Phantom Menace seems to be an overnight flight at most.  So very many characters take interstellar flights in small fighters with no evident way to deal with basic biological necessities (and are never shown racing to the john right after landing) that it seems to suggest most hyperspace trips are a matter of a few hours at most.  

[Duke Togo]

You should just never think that hard about space travel in Star Wars

[jvmacross]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

...and are never shown racing to the john right after landing...

You'd think the topic is so inane that there is no way it would be brought up in Star Wars, but IIRC...didn't Mando's bounty in the first episode request to use the loo aboard his ship?  So I guess some ships have toilets...and the rest probably have some onboard mechanics to deal with it....

[renegadeleader1]

6 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

You should just never think that hard about space travel in Star Wars

Like how in Rise of Skywalker the Falcon hyperdrive hops between about 10 different planets that are nowhere near each other or even on the same hyperspace route?😆

[tekering]

37 minutes ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Like how in Rise of Skywalker the Falcon hyperdrive hops between about 10 different planets that are nowhere near each other or even on the same hyperspace route?😆

The gulf in quality between Andor and Rise of Skywalker could only be measured in parsecs. 

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, jvmacross said:

You'd think the topic is so inane that there is no way it would be brought up in Star Wars, but IIRC...didn't Mando's bounty in the first episode request to use the loo aboard his ship?  So I guess some ships have toilets...and the rest probably have some onboard mechanics to deal with it....

... y'know, you're right.  There is a visible toilet on the Razor Crest in The Mandalorian.  

I guess poor Mando just has to cross his legs and wait now that he's got that Naboo starfighter. 🤣

 

2 hours ago, tekering said:

The gulf in quality between Andor and Rise of Skywalker could only be measured in parsecs. 

Kiloparsecs.  It's difficult to believe Andor and The Rise of Skywalker are even in the same franchise, so vast is the difference in quality.

Imagine what we could have had if the likes of Tony Gilroy had been given creative control of the sequel trilogy instead of Jar-Jar Abrams.

[Duke Togo]

I've been thinking about where Andor sits in my favorite shows of all time. Top 5 for sure. Top 3, maybe? 

[Thom]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

...

Imagine what we could have had if the likes of Tony Gilroy had been given creative control of the sequel trilogy instead of Jar-Jar Abrams.

Thinking too much about it could lead one to insanity...

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... y'know, you're right.  There is a visible toilet on the Razor Crest in The Mandalorian.  

I guess poor Mando just has to cross his legs and wait now that he's got that Naboo starfighter. 🤣

 

Kiloparsecs.  It's difficult to believe Andor and The Rise of Skywalker are even in the same franchise, so vast is the difference in quality.

Imagine what we could have had if the likes of Tony Gilroy had been given creative control of the sequel trilogy instead of Jar-Jar Abrams.

Can we get them to:

Spoiler

Remove the Sequel Trilogy from canon  and have Tony Gilroy the helm?

 

[Roy Focker]

Star War is going to suck now. Andor, Acolyte & Skeleton Crew were all departures from the usual formula. Making each of them was a risk and results varied. As bad a the Acoytle was at least they tried to do something new. You don't get shows like Andor by playing it safe.

The Filoni-verse is bland, functions like the cartoons it was based on, loaded with fan service and is creativity bankrupt. You might find a good scene here and there. They might introduce a really good idea but don't have the balls do anything meaningful with it. But this is the path they are going with for now because it is the safest.

[azrael]

29 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Can we get them to:

  Reveal hidden contents

Remove the Sequel Trilogy from canon  and have Tony Gilroy the helm?

In my head, I already did the first part. 🤣

[Seto Kaiba]

49 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Remove the Sequel Trilogy from canon  and have Tony Gilroy the helm?

As much as I would love that, Tony Gilroy has indicated he's not really interested in a long-term commitment to franchise filmmaking and there is no way Disney is brazen enough to do a partial reboot on Star Wars so soon after rebooting it the first time in order to get rid of the unremarkable and unsatisfying but financially successful sequel trilogy.

 

48 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

Star War is going to suck now.

It sucked before... we're just going to be more aware of how much it sucks now that Star Wars has, by luck or good judgement, produced a series that doesn't.

Going back to shows that read like Dave Filoni playing with his Clone Wars and Rebels action figures is going to feel like one giant leap backwards creatively, but it's far too late for them to recalibrate their creative process for Ahsoka season two or Maul: Shadow Lord, both of which are Clone Wars/Rebels spinoffs.

[F-ZeroOne]

21 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

You should just never think that hard about space travel in Star Wars

 

I know, I know - hyperspace travel in "Star Wars" works however the writers need it to. But that system map has everything much "closer" together than it feels like it should.  Its one of those cases where whats depicted in-universe is at odds with my head canon. 😄

[Duke Togo]

I would love to know what Filoni thinks of Andor. 

[jvmacross]

1 hour ago, Duke Togo said:

I would love to know what Filoni thinks of Andor. 

Pretty sure he's the kind of Star Wars fan that actually likes anything associated with Star Wars.....

[pengbuzz]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Going back to shows that read like Dave Filoni playing with his Clone Wars and Rebels action figures is going to feel like one giant leap backwards creatively, but it's far too late for them to recalibrate their creative process for Ahsoka season two or Maul: Shadow Lord, both of which are Clone Wars/Rebels spinoffs.

When I read that, I couldn't get this clip out of my head:

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Duke Togo said:

I would love to know what Filoni thinks of Andor. 

I've seen video of him praising Andor's writing, particularly its handling of the Empire, at Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023.  He seems to hold it in high regard, though in some other interviews he also seems to want to cling to Star Wars's kid-friendly roots as one might expect from a guy whose entire portfolio is spinoffs of a cartoon.

 

6 hours ago, jvmacross said:

Pretty sure he's the kind of Star Wars fan that actually likes anything associated with Star Wars.....

That certainly seems to be the case.  If nothing else, he's passionate about the job.

 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

When I read that, I couldn't get this clip out of my head:

 

That is... yes.  That's it exactly.

[sh9000]

Excellent Trilogy.

[Big s]

Finally had time to watch the final batch. Glad that it didn’t have the usual restart first episode talking about stuff that happened off screen. I really liked the first two episodes of this batch a lot. Lots of tension and really felt like things were moving.

Spoiler

I do think it’s odd that the movie made K2 seem like a lifetime buddy to Andor, but I guess he barely knew him and really only took him on 1 mission before that. Reminds me of how it seemed like Han Solo went on a bunch of adventures and it turned out that all his wild stories were events during on weekend. And it was nice to see Man Mothma trying his best to move on with his life, although he did seem like he was still having a rough time still wishing for his Mon.

Overall though for this batch, I didn’t really care for the finale. It felt more like a really long epilogue of obvious stuff that you can kinda guess from the two episodes before it. And I guess he never really found out who his sister was and that kinda felt like one of his biggest goals unfulfilled.

 I also think this season really didn’t have much focus on Andor himself and he kinda felt more like a secondary character throughout. 

Overall for the season, it felt kinda mid with a few really great episodes here and there and a few that were pretty cringy. As far as the series overall the first season was far better but I think I need a rewatch of the movie as that would actually be the real end to the story.

Spoiler

Seems lady stink face is stuck in jail for a bit, but I guess that it might only be for a year or two before the rebels take over. I figure there would possibly be a chance of release and her possibly being held up as a hero finally, except for the rebellion since the records would show she was arrested as a rebel spy and pretty much everyone that knew otherwise had died

 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

I do think it’s odd that the movie made K2 seem like a lifetime buddy to Andor, but I guess he barely knew him and really only took him on 1 mission before that. Reminds me of how it seemed like Han Solo went on a bunch of adventures and it turned out that all his wild stories were events during on weekend.

Spoiler

Never got that impression myself... but Andor clearly establishes that K-S2O has been living and working closely with Cassian for 1-2 years before the events of Rogue One.  That's not exactly a short time to get familiar with someone, esp. if you're around them basically 24/7.  K's spent enough downtime with Cassian and Melshi to have played that game they're playing 863 times.  They treat him like one of the boys, so they're clearly quite close.

 

5 hours ago, Big s said:

Spoiler

Seems lady stink face is stuck in jail for a bit, but I guess that it might only be for a year or two before the rebels take over. I figure there would possibly be a chance of release and her possibly being held up as a hero finally, except for the rebellion since the records would show she was arrested as a rebel spy and pretty much everyone that knew otherwise had died

Spoiler

Eh... unlikely for a couple reasons.

First, she's gonna be waiting longer than a year or two.  She was sent to the Imperial prison labor complex on Narkina 5 in either 1 BBY or 0 BBY.  She's got 5-6 years to cool her heels in prison before the Empire fractures at the Battle of Endor and ultimately collapses after the Battle of Jakku.

Second, she's an ex-ISB agent who's now an inmate in an Imperial prison labor complex.  Odds are a good portion of the inmate population are political prisoners and other innocents arrested and sent there by the ISB to meet the imprisonment quotas Major Partagaz mentioned back in season one.  If the other prisoners learn that she was an ISB supervisor they might well kill her.

Third, she's been sent to a prison that we were previously shown and told inevitably drives many inmates to commit suicide via electric floor.  She's also there in the direct aftermath of her My Greatest Failure moment for having dug too greedily and too deep into files she wasn't meant to have.  She might fry herself on the prison's electrified floors in despair or simply be caught up in one of Narkina 5's occasional riots and fried to a crisp for being in proximity to a prison riot.

Fourth, there's no way she's walking free, never mind being mistaken for a hero, if anyone involved is able to identify her when the prisons are finally liberated.  Even if the Imperial prison record shows she was imprisoned for espionage, the Rebel Alliance already knows that she wasn't a rebel spy and was heading up ISB counterespionage efforts for several years.  Rebel soldiers are likely to know her as a war criminal on account of the whole Ghorman Massacre thing she orchestrated.  If she's lucky, rebel soldiers will identify and arrest her while clearing the prison so she can be tried for her crimes on Ghorman and be sentenced to a whole new prison term elsewhere.  If Dedra's unlucky... well... she might find herself on the receiving end of an impromptu firing squad as an Imperial war criminal.

 

[jvmacross]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Never got that impression myself... but Andor clearly establishes that K-S2O has been living and working closely with Cassian for 1-2 years before the events of Rogue One.  That's not exactly a short time to get familiar with someone, esp. if you're around them basically 24/7.  K's spent enough downtime with Cassian and Melshi to have played that game they're playing 863 times.  They treat him like one of the boys, so they're clearly quite close.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Eh... unlikely for a couple reasons.

First, she's gonna be waiting longer than a year or two.  She was sent to the Imperial prison labor complex on Narkina 5 in either 1 BBY or 0 BBY.  She's got 5-6 years to cool her heels in prison before the Empire fractures at the Battle of Endor and ultimately collapses after the Battle of Jakku.

Second, she's an ex-ISB agent who's now an inmate in an Imperial prison labor complex.  Odds are a good portion of the inmate population are political prisoners and other innocents arrested and sent there by the ISB to meet the imprisonment quotas Major Partagaz mentioned back in season one.  If the other prisoners learn that she was an ISB supervisor they might well kill her.

Third, she's been sent to a prison that we were previously shown and told inevitably drives many inmates to commit suicide via electric floor.  She's also there in the direct aftermath of her My Greatest Failure moment for having dug too greedily and too deep into files she wasn't meant to have.  She might fry herself on the prison's electrified floors in despair or simply be caught up in one of Narkina 5's occasional riots and fried to a crisp for being in proximity to a prison riot.

Fourth, there's no way she's walking free, never mind being mistaken for a hero, if anyone involved is able to identify her when the prisons are finally liberated.  Even if the Imperial prison record shows she was imprisoned for espionage, the Rebel Alliance already knows that she wasn't a rebel spy and was heading up ISB counterespionage efforts for several years.  Rebel soldiers are likely to know her as a war criminal on account of the whole Ghorman Massacre thing she orchestrated.  If she's lucky, rebel soldiers will identify and arrest her while clearing the prison so she can be tried for her crimes on Ghorman and be sentenced to a whole new prison term elsewhere.  If Dedra's unlucky... well... she might find herself on the receiving end of an impromptu firing squad as an Imperial war criminal.

 

You must have forgotten that as great as Andor was...it's still "Star Wars"......a franchise where characters can return from even death.....somehow

Edited 4 hours ago by jvmacross

[sh9000]

Nemik's Manifesto.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

30 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

You must have forgotten that as great as Andor was...it's still "Star Wars"......a franchise where characters can return from even death.....somehow

Yeah, the power of dogsh*t-tier writing is a pathway to many plot developments some consider to be unnatural.

That said, in Star Wars, I think we've only seen one person actually return from death and that was just recently.

Spoiler

Asajj Ventress, in Tales of the Underworld.  Dave Filoni was so desperate to try to milk a few more stories out of the Lady Hissyfit there that he brought her arse back from confirmed, canonical, 100% verified, dead-and-actually-buried death through the power of the Dathomir witches dark side force magic and apparently the power of Disney style True Love™️ from a Jedi.  She just pops out of her own grave every bit as whole and healthy as if she'd never died.

Yeah, it's exactly as stupid as I made it sound there.

Emperor Palpatine and Mother Talzin both tried to avoid dying for real by using the dark side to turn themselves into the undead.  Palpatine used the dark side to anchor his mind to his dead-and-rotting corpse like a classic voodoo zombie or a lich.  Talzin used the dark side to turn herself into the galaxy's nastiest lingering fart, existing as a vampiric mist made of "magical ichor".  Both of them needed to feed on the life energy of other people to regain a functional body and avoid dying for real.

Boba Fett just pulls a "reports of my death-by-felching in a giant anus monster in the desert were greatly exaggerated" since he suffers a classic Disney villain "death" offscreen during Return of the Jedi.  

Dedra Meero... well... her ticket is likely to get punched in a less survivable, more verifiable manner.

Spoiler

Like the lethally high voltage electric floors in the Narkina 5 prison complex, being beaten to death by a crowd of furious prisoners who've learned who she is, or execution by a trained (para)military firing squad with high-powered blasters.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, jvmacross said:

You must have forgotten that as great as Andor was...it's still "Star Wars"......a franchise where characters can return from even death.....somehow

I was kinda joking about her making that kind of comeback, but after reading this comment, maybe it’s a decent prediction. I’m gonna laugh pretty hard if there ever is another mention of the character