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

I_R

The whole thing is amazing. A tense uprising, Chekhov's arranged marriage, the prospective father in law looked like a predator, a couple of amazing speeches and that end shot of Cassian and Melshi escaping barefoot. All they need to do is get off planet now.

Maybe the best thing about this is that it suggests that Disney have some sort of idea how to make great TV rather than just throwing content at us and working on the marketing..

Funkstain

Interestingly interviews with Gilroy seem to suggest that Disney was like oh no you don’t with your sombre meditations on the price paid to rebel properly and your grey morality and your sympathetic empire types! And then said actually ok fine
The issue is always one of viewership. The reviews are universally praising; are enough people watching to prove appetite for anything other than low grade filler TV based on everyone’s favourite no brain franchises?

I_R

I hope Disney are looking for critical acclaim and maybe awards with this. The thing about streaming is that it's all going to be there for people in a couple of weeks, viewing numbers can only go up.

b0r1s

It’s lower than the other shows even lower than Boba but filming has started on series 2 so hopefully the creators get to fulfil their vision and that Disney understand that while this will have a more limited appeal they should be spreading their creative output to keep a broad sub demographic.

Yossarian

Interview with Tony Gilroy where he talks about season 2:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/andor-explained-season-1-finale-season-2-preview-1234626573/

You can almost hear him snorting a line at points in that.

b0r1s

Good read that.

It states that season 2 will be the final one which at least means they will get to see it out properly. Happy with that.

monkey

This is ridiculously good tv. I can’t get my head around the leap between Boba Fett and this.

hylian_elf

Very good show. My fear is that season 2 will be way too compressed and suffer as a result.

Funkstain

I’m definitely not looking forward to the time jumps. Even just a year means we’ll lose so much development, and the script will surely become more expository “oh remember what you did last summer off screen, yeah you know when you did that thing that I’m going to tell you about in detail which explains why this woman is so mad at you now remember”

superflyninja

So fucking good yet again. Pity there is only one more series, but hopefully Disney comission Gilroy and co to do more work in the SW universe. I too was quite taken aback by the speech, it was sold extremely well. Serkis was great again.

hylian_elf

I loved the speech type thing from Skarsgard. And the whole scene with Mon Mothma was great.

EvilRedEye

I think three would have been a nice sweet spot.

Funkstain

Gilroy may be in interviews coming up with excuses for no non-humans in prison (tbf quite a good one “how would they have joint WC facilities eh prisons thrive on efficiency”) but he’s not kidding me. The SW world is of zero interest to him other than “it’s quite big and we can do fancy designs” which hardly needs SW anyway. I suppose a lot of context exists: empire, emperor, rebellion. But frankly even that hasn’t been necessary: any absolute newcomer could pick up what’s going on

No funny distracting looking non humans, no magic powers, no lightsabers

Tin says SW deepcuts for fans, it’s like throwing a bone to weenie fans! What have I missed? There’s some familiar planets, the senate, the funny droid, some minor characters from animated spin offs - anything fun?

EvilRedEye

To be fair, aliens would have been irrelevant to the heist arc since the Empire doesn't seem to employ them. Then they went straight on to the prison arc where it sounds they like were impractical for logistical reasons. I don't particularly perceive it as deliberately sticking two fingers up at the more fantastical elements of Star Wars, just them not particularly working for this project.

b0r1s

If you’re a rebellion infiltrating an evil human empire I don’t think a Wookie spy is gonna cut it.

tin_robot

Funkstain wrote:

Tin says SW deepcuts for fans, it’s like throwing a bone to weenie fans! What have I missed? There’s some familiar planets, the senate, the funny droid, some minor characters from animated spin offs - anything fun?

I guess for some you could argue even Mon Mothma is relatively obscure (her daughter Lieda is even more so). Beyond that though - yes, lots of references to planets - Scarif, Fest, Mimban, Wobani. Ships - there are Y-wings, republic gunships, speeder bikes. There's the Kyber crystal. The security droids from Rogue One. There's a reference to the Rakatan from KOTOR. Luthen's entire shop is pretty much stocked with obscure Easter eggs. Colonel Yularen turns up in the ISB. The guy with the floppy hat from Rogue One is in the prison (and is presumably about to be a major character).

Whether any of that is "fun" I'm not sure. I gather Indiana Jones's bullwhip is encased in carbonite in the background of Luthen's shop, but I can't honestly claim to have spotted it...

Funkstain

Ah actually yes I did like the security droid bit that was nice made you think “will this one be his friend?”

The rest are very stock (y wings, planets) or obscure enough that they were probably put there by some Star Wars product manager forced to work on the show

I dont mean that I think Gilroys and team are sticking two fingers up at the fandom at all, sorry - just that what he’s interested in is not Star Wars, or at least what we all have experienced as Star Wars. It’s fascinating that he’s been allowed to make this . Did you know there may well be toys from this?! Can you imagine. Maybe the torture helmet with different dying screams of slaughtered native children will find its way under our Christmas tree this year!

tin_robot

Funkstain wrote:

Ah actually yes I did like the security droid bit that was nice made you think “will this one be his friend?” The rest are very stock (y wings, planets) or obscure enough that they were probably put there by some Star Wars product manager forced to work on the show I dont mean that I think Gilroys and team are sticking two fingers up at the fandom at all, sorry - just that what he’s interested in is not Star Wars, or at least what we all have experienced as Star Wars. It’s fascinating that he’s been allowed to make this . Did you know there may well be toys from this?! Can you imagine. Maybe the torture helmet with different dying screams of slaughtered native children will find its way under our Christmas tree this year!

I completely agree - he's not interested in retelling the stories that have already been told, he's clearly just trying to find new stories to tell in that sandbox - which is absolutely what's needed. (And I'm all for the nods for fans being small details that everyone else can happily ignore, rather than basing the whole show around some nod to the past.)

As for toys - I'm hoping that "Death Screams of Alien Children" will be this year's Christmas Number One.

I_R

The new guy in the prison deserves a model.

Funkstain

The limited edition “serkis as prison boss but WAIT press his head down and he turns into Snoke” 2-for-1 is my top tip

Matt_82

I'm so happy that it's great. I found the mediocre output from Disney, quite tiring. No matter how much I wanted to just step away and let it go, there was always a bit of me that kept clinging to the hope that the next episode/film would be good and I could like Star Wars again. And it rarely was (though I do like Mando, it's more throw away entertaining than actually high quality, IMO).

And now this is excellent. I can look forward to it every week without trepidation.

EvilRedEye

Interesting move from Disney - they're airing Andor episodes 1 and 2 on a number of their TV channels.

monkey

Unfortunate that those two are before the story gets going.

Paul the sparky

I was going to say. It's a bit of a slow burner for that to work

I_R

It wasn't really until the heist that I shook off the idea that it was just going to be more Star Wars.

Paul the sparky

It felt un-Star Warsy to me straight off the bat. Wouldn't say I've immediately fell in love with it though, I'm only 4 eps in

Funkstain

I liked all of it from the start but I quite like my meandering not much happens slow shit. But the heist sequence was great tension- I’d say if you don’t like it after ep6 you’re not gonna like it

Paul the sparky

I don't not like it, I'm glad it's taking it's time with stuff. Just thinking from viewing the first two eps it's not the type of thing I see most people tearing their wallets open for, which I'd assume they'd want to happen?

Funkstain

Odd decision isn’t it? First three work quite well as a mini story, seems a bit cheap of them

tin_robot

Latest episode of Andor remains excellent, though there were a couple of blips for me.

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