The Star Wars thread - "Chewie, we're home." - The Bear and Badger

EvilRedEye

I feel like it's Star Warsy enough. Pretty much everything in Star Wars tries to scream OT vibes all the time - it's nice to watch something that is coherent with the universe while also doing its own thing tonally.

Funkstain

I guess it’s stylistically coherent, like grimy ships and everything looking like it was built in the 70s and then they discovered FTL travel and stopped, like the bulbs in dude’s mum’s apartment block being literally the same things you see in 70s blocks.

There’s a couple of toe fighters in it, erm they’ve got funny names (clem lol)?

Yossarian

Funkstain wrote:

There’s a couple of toe fighters in it.

Do they fight necks wings?

hylian_elf

Great episode!!!

superflyninja

That was a great episode. Lovely stuff.

I_R

This has turned out to be pretty excellent, a Blake's 7/Secret Army mashup in the Star Wars universe with an unlimited budget that I didn't know I needed.

Highlight this week was Mon Mothma telling her old friend what was happening at the party, incredibly written, acted and shot. Andor's boss from the heist appearing on Coruscant with a completely new look and filing through the space port with what seemed to be hundreds of properly costumed extras was something else as well. Shout out to that Miami Vice establishing shot too.

davyK

It's Star Wars for grown ups. Really rather wonderful.

mannaboy

Agree I_R, that scene with Mon Mothma was high quality. Such a surprise how this show has turned out.

Funkstain

So again the Star Wars stuff is entirely irrelevant to the show which a great plus.

What’s been interesting, as a direct result of that, is how it shows perhaps more realistically what it would take to start and run a rebellion. How the heist was absolutely about goading the empire into “closing its fist” as a recruitment drive for the rebellion: people will suffer, people will die, and those like andor who would normally say “eh fuck this I’m off on holiday” get dragged in. How conflicted it makes the morality: making decisions that you know will result in the death and suffering of millions but you still do it.

In magical Star Wars land, you can show this more ‘grey’, morally speaking, rebellion as being ‘not the right way’ that you’ve got to keep your ethics straight or you’re no better than they are - but of course if you don’t use these tactics, the tactics of the terrorist / freedom fighter, the tactics of the ruthless politician who will do anything, sacrifice anyone for the cause, then you need magical superheroes like skywalker and the force to get it done.

So many times in SW movies you see the rebellion in the brink cos they are ‘nicer, less ruthless, less murderous, less able to make the choices with horrible consequences’ but they get away with it cos skywalker

This shows the world without the force and how terribly damaging, how morally bankrupt such a rebellion would have to be

hylian_elf

Heh. Nice post and summary.

b0r1s

Well this show continues to surprise in a good way. The heist I thought was the low point of the show. I thought the action wasn’t that great but overall the last two episodes have made up for it by politics on Coruscant with both the empire and the nascent rebellion. I particularly liked the power play in the imperial meeting where she gets the upper hand on guy from Derek but the icing on the cake on that scene is when she’s told to “watch her back”. Brilliant observation of the realities of power in politics. Then at the end of the episode just when I’m think ahh we’re on pleasure planet it’s all good here. Nope even here the empire is in full force. I really have no idea where this is going.

b0r1s

Oh and props to the shot of the tie fighter pilots jumping into their cockpits with the meteor storm in the background. Beautiful composition that.

Rev

I went back and watched Rogue one and apart from the terrible tentacle beast scene it does very little wrong. It fits in very well with the pacing there is on Andor so it's certainly worth a rewatch imo.

Funkstain

Spoiler:

Funkstain

Do I have to spoiler this stuff btw

b0r1s

I don’t think so. Well I’m not.

Still think the heist needed something else, needed to be a bit tighter action wise. Not sure what it was but it felt lacking compared to the build up. I’m splitting hairs at this point because the show is so far above everything else Disney have produced (Mando I still love btw).

superflyninja

Lovely write ups there peeps. I agree the action in the heist could have been better. It was leagues ahead of anything in BOBF though. And those K2SO droids on the pleasure planet, I got really terminator vibes off them. Grest stuff. That deputy inspector is turning out quite interesting. Not sure where that is leading.

EvilRedEye

Technically there's another thread that was the spoiler one. But I think that's partly because the movies were coming out at the time and people don't necessarily watch them on release day plus Mando was in the public domain for a while before it was released on Disney+ UK etc.

Rev

I really liked the heist because it did away with the 'heist gang being bullet proof until emotionally required'. When the guy made the run for it and was just shot, then it was a shock as you expected most of them to get through. Also the boy not making it after being crushed was shocking because it was more real than I expected. Of course IRL he would be messed up, and of course have major surgery in a back alley hospital is probably not going to work. But to have the guts to say, aye, we're going to kill these guys off and it's going to be shrugged off at the top, then you start to question the purity of the rebellion that we've been fed since 77 and I am so here for that different take.

Rev

Andor was brilliant this week.

EvilRedEye

It's the Hollyoaks man from As Dusk Falls!

I_R

Yennefer Of Vengeberg!

I_R

That was great again. Consequences of the heist coming back round to Andor's home. I guess we can stop cheering on Dedra's career advancement now. I don't see her or Syril having a redemption arc any time soon.

Luthen trying to unify the rebels and Saw being mad as hatter, while also thinking the other rebels are bad news. Then I thought about it and realised I wouldn't really want Luthen as an ally either, so he's probably right. Kudos at Disney's ability to just drop Forrest Whittaker into a show when they need him. Great scene.

A prison factory is always going to be nightmare, but they made this genuinely unsettling in a fresh way. Very sci-fi. It's a nice touch that they don't spell it out that Andor is responsible for adding years to everyone's time, which nicely goes back to Luthen wanting to cause all this misery as a way to fire up the rebellion.

davyK

I thought Andor was finished for a while. Great to hear it's continuing.

hylian_elf

Whittaker was great!

EvilRedEye

The disappointing thing about Andor - at one point it was planned to be a five season series covering the five years up to Rogue One (which is why season 1 is set five years before Rogue One and is set over roughly a year). Then they changed it to three seasons - fair enough, it ended up taking two years to make each season so five years would take too long. But now it's only two seasons and in season 2 each three-episode arc will move a year forward. I worry season 2 will feel a bit truncated... Would have liked three seasons.

Funkstain

That could be a shame. Although it’s guilty of the usual serial slowness, I’ve enjoyed the time spent with the characters.

superflyninja

That last episode, fucking great. The Mon Mothma stuff is so well written. There was a line about familiarity and boredom as she glanced at her husband, lovely stuff.
Was very surprised to see Andy Serkis and Forest Whitaker in there. Great turns by both. The prison complex though...that was very unsettling.
This is just so good.

Also there are rumours(again) that Kathleen Kennedy is out?

Rev

What I loved about the prison scene is that throughout the whole thing, you're expecting him to be hatching this escape plan, making connections and busting out. You see him eying up the boots as soon as he arrives, but by the end of the episode, he's pitching in to get the machinery completed asap just like everyone else, as almost as if he's broken. It was such a powerful reflection on how the oppression of the machine just works.

tin_robot

Yep, I'm also still loving Andor. The three episode arcs work really well - spy movie, bank heist, prison break (?) allowing a relatively slow pace and characterization, without leaving you feeling it's going nowhere.

Similarly I'm liking the attention to detail - the sheer tedious bureaucracy of the Empire, the gentle exploration of almost every character's back story, even if they seem trivial. Andor barely speaks for the first half of the most recent episode, they're happy to let Diego Luna do the work. (And he does.)

I wonder whether part of it comes from them knowing that no-one really cared about the character before, so they don't feel the need to trumpet references, and instead just tell a decent story. Several characters from Rogue One are dropped into the latest episode, but there's little fanfare about it. Whittaker can't help but stand out, but the introduction of Andor's future teammate from Rogue One was delivered in such an understated manner that I almost didn't notice it was the same guy. And he's there not because the fans want it, but because it makes sense - whilst giving some indication of how things might go down in the next installment...

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