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Andor season 2
- Thread starter CaptainWacky
- Start date
whisky
Boobie inspector
I liked how the ride up to arrest the girl was essentially the same as the end of season one, someone leading the troops who was inexperienced, a big English guy was was really in charge, a bunch of troops who don't respect the leader, only last time Cyril survived, and this guy got turned into a meat shield.
So the place Bix goes to feel safe is the planet where she was nearly raped and had to kill the guy to get him off her?
So the place Bix goes to feel safe is the planet where she was nearly raped and had to kill the guy to get him off her?
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Well she knows he's definitely not coming back because she caved his skull in.
This is very much how I feel. I’m still thinking about this show and how much it’s expanded the lore of the central political conflict (Star Wars was always political), improved an already great film in Rogue One, and somehow managed to clear season one (which I thought was absolutely fantastic too) multiple times a day. If that’s not the hallmark of a great show, then nothing is (it is).
I feel compelled to write a long and sprawling review of the entire thing, but I’m currently up to my eyeballs in coding and feeling an aversion to long-form writing—or, frankly, anything. I don’t think I could do it justice. It would probably devolve into a soup of superlatives.
To say it’s the best thing Disney has done with the IP is a hilariously easy claim, because it is, by a margin.
That said, I don’t think everyone who bounced off it is a moron. I can see how some who like the swashbuckling, operatic pulp of Star Wars might not vibe with it, but I doubt I’d have very much in common with them. That’s what you want from a company like Disney taking on this IP, though. Try different things. Don't play it safe. The Sequel Trilogy (which I consider an unmitigated disaster) was such a derivative pile of slop once you scraped off the veneer, so a show like Andor is just a delight on so many levels.
I hope it continues to gain more success and eyeballs (cream tends to rise to the top), because while I’m not sure Tony Gilroy would commit to another massive Star Wars project (I think he’s proved his point), there is room for darker and genre-bending ideas in this universe. That’s always been part of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (in varying degrees of success) and who knew, it works here too!
Kyehlar
Grovel And Subscribe!
I did the same thing. Finally watched the last episode of Andor the other night, and then watched Rogue One last night. Amazing how it all fit together, ten years apart like that. A lot of care went into that finale to make the transition feel seamless. The only difference was Cassian's uniform. I don't remember the Captain's patch on it in Andor.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
"That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"
"The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station."
My dream: A series set in the aftermath of the Death Star's destruction. How DOES the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy or the Death Star? Think of all the little rebellions that most have broken out all over the galaxy. Think what the new head of the ISB had to deal with! (Although having the ISB continue to be a focus without Partagaz would be a bit tough because that character was so good.)
Kyehlar
Grovel And Subscribe!
The game Star Wars: Outlaws is set between Empire and Return, and slightly deals with the ISB and crime syndicates. Might be worth taking a look at.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
(I will call the tv show "Andor" in this post and the character "Cassian" to avoid minor confusion.)
Rewatched in light of Andor. How does it all hold up overall? See later in this post! Does it line-up well with the tv show? Yes, I'd say it does, for the most part! The first thing to say is that obviously they do feel different. You can't mistake Rogue One for another 3 episode Andor arc. It's a two hour 15 minute blockbuster movie, not a 24 episode spy drama. But the opening with Cassian meeting Tivik does feel like it flows on perfectly from Andor. You see Cassian using what he's learned from Luthen and him recognising the name "Erso" hits different when you know how he knows it. Generally just knowing everything Cassian went through in Andor adds something to all his scenes. We know so much about him! He's already a complete character coming into the movie. When he says "rebellions are built on hope" Diego Luna delivers the line as if it's something he's heard before and that works out really well now!
The only part that doesn't fit at all with Andor regarding Cassian's character is when he says he's "been in this fight since I was six years old." The intent in the movie is clearly that Andor's been fighting the Empire his whole life and is a longtime, dedicated rebel, in contrast with Jyn who has given up after Saw betrayed her. Yet Andor shows he's only been part of the rebellion for four years and nearly quit as recently as a year before. You could try to fanwank it and say he's lying to motivate Jyn, but that doesn't really fit the way the scene plays. It doesn't really matter, of course; I certainly wouldn't change how his story in Andor played out in order to make it fit this one line. It's just a thing worth noting.
I like how Andor has Krennic as the terrifying, high up Imperial, but here we see that he's really nothing to the much more terrifying Tarkin and Vader, killed by his own super weapon because he's not needed anymore. And Ben Mendelsohn's performance always impressed me, he feels different from any other Imperial villain. Mon Mothma doesn't get a huge amount to do in Rogue One, but we can think about everything that happened in Andor during her scenes now (like getting high at her daughter's wedding) so that's cool. Melshi is a really minor character here (Jyn hits him in the face with a shovel!) so it's fun whenever you spot him and you think "oh, it's that guy from the show!" I always found it weird (but kind of cool) that the force theme plays when Bail Organa first appears. It still doesn't make much sense with Andor in mind, but it now feels like it's there to announce that he's no longer Benjamin Bratt and he's gone back to being Jimmy Smits just in time to die.
I always found the stuff around Saw Gerrera to be the weakest part of the movie...and still do. But the extra context from Andor does help a lot, especially with his death scene. Just like Luthen he's a relic at this point, no longer fitting with the organised rebellion Draven's got going on Yavin. He's been fighting the Empire longer than anyone, but his type of extremism isn't what's needed anymore. Luke Skywalker definitely wasn't huffing no fumes. He's able to tell his adopted daughter that her real dad is actually a good guy who never stopped fighting the Empire, and get her back in the fight. There's nothing left for him to do after that - his body's literally giving up on him too (he's got metal feet!) - so it makes sense that he makes no attempt to escape Jedha City's destruction. On a side note it's pretty crazy that the Rebellion lost Luthen, Saw, Cassian, Raddus and Bail all within like a week or two of Luke destroying the Death Star. Crazy times!
Just looking at this as a movie on the whole, there are certainly still problems. It feels like they cut a load out regarding Saw. They could have definitely done more with his relationship with Jyn and what he means to her compared to the memory of her real dad. The first third of the movie makes Saw out to be really important, but when he dies no one really reacts, not even Jyn! Then he isn't mentioned again. Remember the first teaser trailer where he's all "What will you do they come for you! What will you become if you continue to fight?" I wish we'd seen that Saw in the movie. I always felt like he was maybe meant to be the rebellions version of Darth Vader (they're both cyborgs) but that isn't developed here at all and is possibly just a thing I made up in my head. Also him having a mind-reading octopus named Bor Gullet is very wacky and ultimately pointless since Bodhi is fine shortly after being tentacle probed.
Speaking of the others characters! Bodhi is one of the better ones, but I still find it weird that the movie keeps telling us about him being a pilot but then he barely does any piloting and his part in the big climatic battle is running some cable across a beach. Get him in an X-Wing! Baze we know nothing about but I like his big cannon thing. Chirrit is cool and gets the funniest line of the movie (you know the one) and his character now feels like us leaving the grounded world of Andor and entering the world of (force sensitive?) blind guys beating up Stormtroopers, before Luke arrives on the scene and turns off his targeting computer and things get really fantastical.
K-2SO is perfect as he is.
Overall the "Rogue One" team don't end up feeling as close as the movie wants us to think they are with Baze's still bizarre "little sister" line to Jyn.
Jyn though, she's good and I really like Felicity Jones. She is very much the main character. There's a temptation to think it would have been cool if they'd managed to get here to appear in Andor somehow, but it would have been really hard to make her fit. We know here she's just gotten out of prison after five years, so she'd need to be in season 1 where she would have been just 16 years old. Felicity Jones was already 32 playing 21 in this movie so I don't think there was much consideration towards having her play a teenager when she was pushing 40. But really, the movie tells Jyn's complete story. If you're watching this right after the tv show, you just have to accept that the main character here isn't someone we know from Andor - and it helps that that character is played by Felicity Jones so I'm fine with it.
Final complaints: The Tarkin deepfake looks terrible and has only gotten worse with age. When he first appears he has his back to the camera and we just see him reflected in a window and hear his voice. This actually works fine! But then he turns round and goes on to have extended dialogue with Krennic, and later appears in a couple more scenes. It's distracting and weird and they should have just gotten a human actor in prosthetics.
Bail Organa's "he served me well in the Clone Wars" line alluding to Obi-Wan is the absolute most clunky, worst line in the movie. And what is going on with Leia? Bail goes to tell Captain Antilles he has a job for him: taking Leia to Tatooine to fetch Obi-Wan, we presume. But then the Tantive just sits inside Raddus's ship during the whole battle of Scarif, ultimately flying away with the Death Star plans. Why was it there though, and not on its way to Tatooine? That couldn't have been planned, they didn't even know Cassian was going to be transmitting the plans, for all they knew Rogue One would just need escorted from Scarrif. It's of course all just there so we can end the movie with Leia saying "hope" which is a nice idea but, like with Tarkin, the technology isn't really there (and the timing was really unfortunate as I think first watched this movie literally on the day Carrie Fisher died.)
It's really stupid that the master switch is just sitting on the beach like that!
But! BUT! I do like the movie! It has some spectacularly good parts. It really comes together in the third act in a way that transcends and elevates the somewhat shaky first half. At its best it's the best Disney Star Wars movies have been and its best scenes are up there at Andor quality. Specifically, everything from when everyone starts dying and Jyn calls up to Raddus and he asks for a hammerhead corvette onwards. Jyn and Cassian embracing on the beach as the Death Star's beam reaches them? Yeah, that's peak Star Wars. Just listen to this and try not to feel anything, you monster.
And yeah, it adds a lot when you think of Bix (and B2!) still out there with Cassian's baby.
It's well known that the movie is something of a Frankenstein creation, with credited director Gareth Edwards not working on the extensive reshoots and Tony Gilroy doing rewrites and possibly some directing (do we even know?) After how good Andor was, it's easy to think Gilroy deserves credit for everything good in this movie and downplay Edwards. And I don't really know who did what, but I know there's one thing Edwards definitely deserves a ton of credit for and that's the sense of scale in this movie. Years ago I had a really vivid nightmare where Godzilla was destroying Glasgow and I think it was because of Edwards' 2014 Godzilla movie (I had some issues with that movie on the whole but definitely not regarding realistic depictions of a giant lizard destroying a city.) I'm shocked that I haven't had similar dreams about the Death Star because of this movie. I mean, this is terrifying...
The whole battle of Scarif rules too. I can't really articulate why the space stuff looks so much better here than in other movies and tv shows but it just does? I think it looks like it could fit in the original trilogy, but it doesn't look like it's trying to look old fashioned. Like the CGI ships are so good they look like they could be practical models but they move around in ways that models can't do. It's old and modern at the same time. Or something! It's nice and chunky and, again, feels big. When Vader's Star Destroyer comes out of hyperspace and the much smaller rebel ships just splat against it? Yeah, that's good stuff, folks.
Speaking of Vader, when the movie first came out I think I was like "okay, the hallway scene was cool but it was JUST FANSERVICE IT STOOD OUT BADLY OBVIOUS RESHOOTS I'M SO INTELLIGENT." But now I do think it does fit really well with the theme of the movie. The nameless rebels in their silly hats who Vader slaughters? They're the real heroes. This movie and Andor are really the story of everyone who died just so that Luke could be in a position to destroy the Death Star. Some are well extremely well developed characters like Cassian, some are just guys in funny hates, but they're all all important. And yes, it is just awesome watching Vader killing the poor dudes like the scariest horror villain ever and it's okay to enjoy that!
So yeah in obvious conclusion: Rogue One good. Rogue One after Andor better. Watch them together. Wacky says you have to.
(I will call the tv show "Andor" in this post and the character "Cassian" to avoid minor confusion.)
Rewatched in light of Andor. How does it all hold up overall? See later in this post! Does it line-up well with the tv show? Yes, I'd say it does, for the most part! The first thing to say is that obviously they do feel different. You can't mistake Rogue One for another 3 episode Andor arc. It's a two hour 15 minute blockbuster movie, not a 24 episode spy drama. But the opening with Cassian meeting Tivik does feel like it flows on perfectly from Andor. You see Cassian using what he's learned from Luthen and him recognising the name "Erso" hits different when you know how he knows it. Generally just knowing everything Cassian went through in Andor adds something to all his scenes. We know so much about him! He's already a complete character coming into the movie. When he says "rebellions are built on hope" Diego Luna delivers the line as if it's something he's heard before and that works out really well now!
The only part that doesn't fit at all with Andor regarding Cassian's character is when he says he's "been in this fight since I was six years old." The intent in the movie is clearly that Andor's been fighting the Empire his whole life and is a longtime, dedicated rebel, in contrast with Jyn who has given up after Saw betrayed her. Yet Andor shows he's only been part of the rebellion for four years and nearly quit as recently as a year before. You could try to fanwank it and say he's lying to motivate Jyn, but that doesn't really fit the way the scene plays. It doesn't really matter, of course; I certainly wouldn't change how his story in Andor played out in order to make it fit this one line. It's just a thing worth noting.
I like how Andor has Krennic as the terrifying, high up Imperial, but here we see that he's really nothing to the much more terrifying Tarkin and Vader, killed by his own super weapon because he's not needed anymore. And Ben Mendelsohn's performance always impressed me, he feels different from any other Imperial villain. Mon Mothma doesn't get a huge amount to do in Rogue One, but we can think about everything that happened in Andor during her scenes now (like getting high at her daughter's wedding) so that's cool. Melshi is a really minor character here (Jyn hits him in the face with a shovel!) so it's fun whenever you spot him and you think "oh, it's that guy from the show!" I always found it weird (but kind of cool) that the force theme plays when Bail Organa first appears. It still doesn't make much sense with Andor in mind, but it now feels like it's there to announce that he's no longer Benjamin Bratt and he's gone back to being Jimmy Smits just in time to die.
I always found the stuff around Saw Gerrera to be the weakest part of the movie...and still do. But the extra context from Andor does help a lot, especially with his death scene. Just like Luthen he's a relic at this point, no longer fitting with the organised rebellion Draven's got going on Yavin. He's been fighting the Empire longer than anyone, but his type of extremism isn't what's needed anymore. Luke Skywalker definitely wasn't huffing no fumes. He's able to tell his adopted daughter that her real dad is actually a good guy who never stopped fighting the Empire, and get her back in the fight. There's nothing left for him to do after that - his body's literally giving up on him too (he's got metal feet!) - so it makes sense that he makes no attempt to escape Jedha City's destruction. On a side note it's pretty crazy that the Rebellion lost Luthen, Saw, Cassian, Raddus and Bail all within like a week or two of Luke destroying the Death Star. Crazy times!
Just looking at this as a movie on the whole, there are certainly still problems. It feels like they cut a load out regarding Saw. They could have definitely done more with his relationship with Jyn and what he means to her compared to the memory of her real dad. The first third of the movie makes Saw out to be really important, but when he dies no one really reacts, not even Jyn! Then he isn't mentioned again. Remember the first teaser trailer where he's all "What will you do they come for you! What will you become if you continue to fight?" I wish we'd seen that Saw in the movie. I always felt like he was maybe meant to be the rebellions version of Darth Vader (they're both cyborgs) but that isn't developed here at all and is possibly just a thing I made up in my head. Also him having a mind-reading octopus named Bor Gullet is very wacky and ultimately pointless since Bodhi is fine shortly after being tentacle probed.
Speaking of the others characters! Bodhi is one of the better ones, but I still find it weird that the movie keeps telling us about him being a pilot but then he barely does any piloting and his part in the big climatic battle is running some cable across a beach. Get him in an X-Wing! Baze we know nothing about but I like his big cannon thing. Chirrit is cool and gets the funniest line of the movie (you know the one) and his character now feels like us leaving the grounded world of Andor and entering the world of (force sensitive?) blind guys beating up Stormtroopers, before Luke arrives on the scene and turns off his targeting computer and things get really fantastical.
K-2SO is perfect as he is.
Overall the "Rogue One" team don't end up feeling as close as the movie wants us to think they are with Baze's still bizarre "little sister" line to Jyn.
Jyn though, she's good and I really like Felicity Jones. She is very much the main character. There's a temptation to think it would have been cool if they'd managed to get here to appear in Andor somehow, but it would have been really hard to make her fit. We know here she's just gotten out of prison after five years, so she'd need to be in season 1 where she would have been just 16 years old. Felicity Jones was already 32 playing 21 in this movie so I don't think there was much consideration towards having her play a teenager when she was pushing 40. But really, the movie tells Jyn's complete story. If you're watching this right after the tv show, you just have to accept that the main character here isn't someone we know from Andor - and it helps that that character is played by Felicity Jones so I'm fine with it.
Final complaints: The Tarkin deepfake looks terrible and has only gotten worse with age. When he first appears he has his back to the camera and we just see him reflected in a window and hear his voice. This actually works fine! But then he turns round and goes on to have extended dialogue with Krennic, and later appears in a couple more scenes. It's distracting and weird and they should have just gotten a human actor in prosthetics.
Bail Organa's "he served me well in the Clone Wars" line alluding to Obi-Wan is the absolute most clunky, worst line in the movie. And what is going on with Leia? Bail goes to tell Captain Antilles he has a job for him: taking Leia to Tatooine to fetch Obi-Wan, we presume. But then the Tantive just sits inside Raddus's ship during the whole battle of Scarif, ultimately flying away with the Death Star plans. Why was it there though, and not on its way to Tatooine? That couldn't have been planned, they didn't even know Cassian was going to be transmitting the plans, for all they knew Rogue One would just need escorted from Scarrif. It's of course all just there so we can end the movie with Leia saying "hope" which is a nice idea but, like with Tarkin, the technology isn't really there (and the timing was really unfortunate as I think first watched this movie literally on the day Carrie Fisher died.)
It's really stupid that the master switch is just sitting on the beach like that!
But! BUT! I do like the movie! It has some spectacularly good parts. It really comes together in the third act in a way that transcends and elevates the somewhat shaky first half. At its best it's the best Disney Star Wars movies have been and its best scenes are up there at Andor quality. Specifically, everything from when everyone starts dying and Jyn calls up to Raddus and he asks for a hammerhead corvette onwards. Jyn and Cassian embracing on the beach as the Death Star's beam reaches them? Yeah, that's peak Star Wars. Just listen to this and try not to feel anything, you monster.
And yeah, it adds a lot when you think of Bix (and B2!) still out there with Cassian's baby.
It's well known that the movie is something of a Frankenstein creation, with credited director Gareth Edwards not working on the extensive reshoots and Tony Gilroy doing rewrites and possibly some directing (do we even know?) After how good Andor was, it's easy to think Gilroy deserves credit for everything good in this movie and downplay Edwards. And I don't really know who did what, but I know there's one thing Edwards definitely deserves a ton of credit for and that's the sense of scale in this movie. Years ago I had a really vivid nightmare where Godzilla was destroying Glasgow and I think it was because of Edwards' 2014 Godzilla movie (I had some issues with that movie on the whole but definitely not regarding realistic depictions of a giant lizard destroying a city.) I'm shocked that I haven't had similar dreams about the Death Star because of this movie. I mean, this is terrifying...
The whole battle of Scarif rules too. I can't really articulate why the space stuff looks so much better here than in other movies and tv shows but it just does? I think it looks like it could fit in the original trilogy, but it doesn't look like it's trying to look old fashioned. Like the CGI ships are so good they look like they could be practical models but they move around in ways that models can't do. It's old and modern at the same time. Or something! It's nice and chunky and, again, feels big. When Vader's Star Destroyer comes out of hyperspace and the much smaller rebel ships just splat against it? Yeah, that's good stuff, folks.
Speaking of Vader, when the movie first came out I think I was like "okay, the hallway scene was cool but it was JUST FANSERVICE IT STOOD OUT BADLY OBVIOUS RESHOOTS I'M SO INTELLIGENT." But now I do think it does fit really well with the theme of the movie. The nameless rebels in their silly hats who Vader slaughters? They're the real heroes. This movie and Andor are really the story of everyone who died just so that Luke could be in a position to destroy the Death Star. Some are well extremely well developed characters like Cassian, some are just guys in funny hates, but they're all all important. And yes, it is just awesome watching Vader killing the poor dudes like the scariest horror villain ever and it's okay to enjoy that!
So yeah in obvious conclusion: Rogue One good. Rogue One after Andor better. Watch them together. Wacky says you have to.
Excellent review. It’s a fantastic film with a few rough edges, but Andor absolutely adds a lot, which is exactly what you want from a prequel that actually deepens the original. Cassian’s whole vibe is different; you actually get why he’s so dead-eyed. Felicity’s great ofc. The Vader hallway scene is obviously fan service, but it works and it’s badass. The desperation and stakes are clear as day. Plus, it leads to that great mirror with Luke in The Mandalorian.
Completely agree on the scale. The Scarif battle feels massive, and the space stuff is modern without looking desperate to show off. Edwards nails that chunky, practical look. The only real blemish is the uncanny valley mess with Tarkin and Leia. I’d put money on a Special Edition fixing it. At this point, most people could probably do a better job with local tools in their bedroom which is pretty crazy.
Completely agree on the scale. The Scarif battle feels massive, and the space stuff is modern without looking desperate to show off. Edwards nails that chunky, practical look. The only real blemish is the uncanny valley mess with Tarkin and Leia. I’d put money on a Special Edition fixing it. At this point, most people could probably do a better job with local tools in their bedroom which is pretty crazy.