ANDOR aka Glum Village : its own thread

pockets

are fermenting

Luna now in his last week of shooting for S2 apparently

i'm watching this again. welcome to my blog.

after cassian kills the two security goons, he confers with his friend at work to concoct a lie about it. in the very next scene we see the security team contracted by the empire also concocting a lie about it. this is a world where truth is often v inconvenient

i was struck by how vader-like luthen looks right from the beginning.. he sweeps out of his ship in silhouette, his long cape flapping behind him..

maybe just me, but i liked how we watch the kids of ferrix putting on their warpaint, and then cut to syril - also someone who cares very much about his costume

this show is such a miracle, i need to rescreen too

gets to you, doesn’t it?

that’s what a reckoning sound like.

you want it to stop, but it just keeps coming

don’t you want to fight these bastards for real?

yes, yes i fuckin do

I rewatched it last year and think often about this exchange between Cassian and Maarva:

“I'll be worried about you all the time.”
“That's just love. Nothing you can do about that.”

nothing like being unexpectedly punched in the heart by a star war

still can't quite believe that maarva's funeral speech and stellan skarsgard's sacrifice monologue both happened in a star war, just incredible pieces of writing absolutely knocked out of the park by the actors

comments here making me want to watch it again. i’m almost seeing it as a negative image or anti star war at this point. sure, it exists because of the star war but its purpose is to destroy premise of same.

well it really stands out to me how the OG star wars are all about emperors and princesses and priests and this one is all about thieves and miners and cops and prisoners. yet at the same time it takes the premise of the OG seriously: what if there was an armed rebellion against a corrupt and sadistic galactic order? how would it work? at times is it even distinguishable from robbery, murder?

at the end of ep 3, as the story of andor's escape from ferrix wraps up, his face in luthen's ship as they blast off towards parts unknown - it's not an excited face. it's angry & skeptical. keeping its powder dry. the editing sets up a parallel with maarva taking him from kenari. first a new mother figure, now a new father figure. he loves maarva. does he love this guy? we'll see.

it makes star wars seem incredibly silly

i rewatched a couple of weeks back. i recommend it.

As I mentioned above it’s materialist Star Wars. The Force is a complete non-factor.

yes, saw that comment and was turning it over in my head. thought about the often observed line that the original star wars is itself quite materialist - a second hand junk recycling universe. many people planet-bound, aspirations of flying to the stars extremely unlikely and only adventurers, the extremely wealthy and the politically dominant ever do it.

but yes the presence of the Force as an active quasi mystical quantity in that universe does change things, and that’s emphasised and really becomes the central theme over the trilogy.

royal blood, magic blood is still lucas' central storytelling obsession

“I’d rather die fighting than die giving them what they want” still gives me fucking goosebumps

I had forgotten that Luthen's dramatic speech about sacrifice is in the SAME EPISODE as the climax of the prison break. Just insane

I guess this was obvious the first time around to most people but it really is quite clear how this is the anti-OG trilogy. Not just proletariat vs the OG nobility, not just tone, but the central mystery of the OG movies is how you can 1) fight the dark side without 2) giving in to your anger. fighting, killing, destroying... these things are necessary if you want to participate in a Star War against the Empire. Vader confronts Luke with this contradiction and it feels insurmountable. but in this... the mentor figure is no longer Obi-Wan but explicitly Vader like. a man who's comfortable with moral triage. and Cassian himself is the embodiment of Han's frontier "shoot first" mentality. It's like they took all the interesting rough bits from the mythos, the bits that get sanded away, and put them at the center.

"And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude." = i.e. no medal ceremony for me. No princess giving me approving looks. It's not the world I inhabit

the cynical part of me thinks this show is just the product of some disney MBA saying "market segmentation" - let's make star wars big enough to accommodate magic and wizards, cute pokemon, and grimdark sci-fi. but it's a good show, a really good show. one thing i'm tempted to say about it is it doesn't need the star wars universe at all, it could stand on its own - but nah, being set in the star wars universe lets you skip a lot of the broad brush worldbuilding and to focus on the local.

Very true that you don't actually need the Star Wars connection but if it's a dialectic with the OG trilogy then I guess you do

It would be interesting to see what someone who has little to no knowledge of Star Wars thinks of this show. I don't think you really need to have seen the movies, but you do need to have at least some minimal knowledge of the star wars universe and how stuff works in star wars.

It's nice to see an angle on SW that returns some bleakness to that universe. The other shows and the Abrams trilogy are just so unserious in comparison, the films in particular being saddled with that awkward Hollywood tone of self aware humor winking to the audience and ott space opera darkness which feels as earned as a very special episode of transformers idk. Andor feels exceptionally well-realized and vv surprisingly powerful.

Very true that you don't actually need the Star Wars connection but if it's a dialectic with the OG trilogy then I guess you do

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, February 5, 2024 5:16 PM bookmarkflaglink

yeah, i think the fact i feel intrinsically it needs the OG trilogy in order to visibly and noticeably negate it means it's the latter. it's noticeable, and part of the viewing pleasure, right?

Something that really struck me in the prison sequence is how good this show is at showing you how much WORK goes into it all. Man when he's sawing away at that pipe... it is fuckin HARD.

sort of, i find it distracting for example to think about how this show's mon mothma squares with the trilogy's cool, stately mon mothma and making it work in my head

this show’s mon mothma is pretty stately and cool! no?

Still find the season 1 structure to be really fascinating, it's basically these four extremely tense climaxes to four separate story parts, vs a single stretched-thin storyline leading to one climax, which is a problem with a lot of shows. Here there's just so much going on, such a wealth of character and plot. And it's never overly busy.

her scenes give me a lot of anxiety! xp

Love the way the season is structured. The first couple episodes aren't that exciting and lull you into thinking it's going to be one of those streaming shows where nothing happens, forever.

Then it suddenly puts its foot on the pedal and doesn't let go for eight episodes, so when things slow down after the prison break, the respite is kind of a relief.

abandoning the double life and embracing her role as a leader of the rebellion movement would probably feel like a weight off her shoulders

xp

Also, I like that it's proof that you can make something fun and exciting without veering into sassy self-knowing Marvel territory, or doing something horribly hetero and grimdark

All true, the total lack of sassiness was pretty damn refreshing, as was the lack of shocking deaths for the sake of having shocking deaths.

i don't think andor needs star wars, but andor being set in the star was universe makes the OG trilogy better, and in that sense it makes watching andor more rewarding.

To me at least it's an ideal version of where Star wars as a franchise should have gone

I think creating this story that parallels many events in the real world in a familiar fictional environment gives it some legs. The cost of entry is lower when people notice historical and aesthetic reference points that they've absorbed over years.

Andor's well-written enough that it conveys why you should care about these characters, their particular hardships, the oppression fairly quickly. But it's an easy sell when it's presented as fiction and it's a well-known fictional landscape.

Trying to get the random guy on the street in the US to watch The Battle of Algiers (language presentation aside) is probably trickier than getting them to watch Saving Private Ryan despite the former carrying a lot of historical weight.

Stellan's buzzed for it. (No details, obv., but it's a nice little moment.)

https://gizmodo.com/andor-season-2-luthen-rael-stellan-skarsgard-disney-1851222290

Wait, hold up, what is this "Abrams trilogy" when its at home?

I like to think Rian in his heart of hearts went 'oh this is what you've given me, too bad'

'Too bad' might need unpacking there, if it's "too bad, I'm going to tip half of it out the window", that's fair enough.

(There is a separate matter of "unserious" being used as an insult on the website ilxor.com - particularly in defence of a (great) series that's regularly pretty funny)

Abrams habitually cannot finish a story, his ability lies in hooking you with an opening. so he was a bad choice to take it to the finish line. just an absolutely mediocre talent. as flawed as TLJ was, it was at least interesting and RJ is a director capable of memorable imagery. though i don't really think in retrospect he should have been picked, either. it's kinda weird they're returning to the well with a Rey film, not because Daisy Ridley wasn't good (she was one of the few good things i took away from the trilogy) but you'd think they'd want to completely move past it.

It’s funny how the first time you watch Andor it takes awhile to realise how central Dedro Meero is, or at least it did for me. Plenty of characters in the ISB. Her ambitious and petulant rival; her tough but fair boss; the dude who wants a fancy office on Ferrix; etc etc. So I wasn’t watching her that closely at the beginning. This time I was. And she is just fucking phenomenal all the way through. The tiniest twitch of an eyebrow, the slightest widening of the eyes. This is not stuff that plays in a 1000-seat theatre. This is very close-up stuff and the level of control is just off the scale

i had read that Denise Gough was a bit inspired by Gus Fring in her interpreation of the character.

turns out i was rewatching this in parallel w/u tracer, bursting into tears at the exact same moments lol

'Too bad' might need unpacking there, if it's "too bad, I'm going to tip half of it out the window", that's fair enough.

Very much my meaning!

xxp denise gough would be perfect as a young margaret thatcher

I definitely agree with the point about this being very loosely linked to Star Wars - TLJ strikes me as what happens if you treat it more like the Aliens movies, Rian Johnson clearly came in and said "okay, this is an interesting framework, here's a story I want to tell in it"

(I know it's an over-wondered thought in geek circles, but I do always wonder how big the ripples would be if David Lynch had directed RotJ)

Gough was my favourite thing in the show (among many, many favourite things - set design, no magic, Andy Serkis, prison stun floor ...)

Yes inclined to agree, she's somewhat first among equals.

Although I guess it's evident Gilroy is not reeeally burdened by telling this story in not only the same galaxy as Gungans and Babu Frik but in the increasingly carved up yet still alluring nexus between Eps III and IV where there are always the events and aspects of those plus R1 to bear in mind I'd be interested to see what he could do truly free of all that while still offering a modern branded Star War, maybe concurrent and complimentary to the Rey trilogy.

Rian Johnson clearly came in and said "okay, this is an interesting framework, here's a story I want to tell in it"

Tangentially, did anyone else read that scene with Kylo killing Snoke and then inviting Rey to join him (as sparks fall dramatically from the ceiling) as Rian Johnson inviting JJ Abrams to actually do something new and interesting with the franchise? I can't tell if this is insane or obvious.

bringing this stuff into the andor thread is actually kind of upsetting