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Comment by eslaught | Hacker News Reader

I loved Star Wars as a kid. Then the prequels made me jaded that there could ever be anything as good as the originals. The sequels and other content did nothing to dissuade me from this. Then Andor showed up and it's like, holy cow, this is actually good.

Sometimes when the follow-on content is bad... it's because the follow-on content is bad.

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Check out Clone Wars and Bad Batch. These brought me back to star wars fandom. Don’t be put off by animation. The stories are excellent and there is lots of character development.

Rebels as well, which IMO was the best of all 3.

Clone Wars & Rebels both suffer at first from being a bit too kid-oriented, but both wind up getting pretty serious over time.

I really tried to make it work, but going through the first season was unbearable dread... imagining that there are like 5 more to get to good stuff is IMO not worth it.

I did watch The Clone Wars (note this is the 2008 TV series, not the 2003 one). The last season (especially the finale) was amazing, up there with Andor for best Star Wars content of all time. But watching the rest of it to get to that point was honestly a slog, and plenty of the shows are gag-worthy or at least blah. It's bad enough I can't recommend it to friends, but I've been trying to think about whether there's a minimal subset of shows I can recommend watching to give enough of the experience that you can appreciate that finale without needing to suffer through the rest of it.

Andor comes with the distinct advantage that you don't have to slog through hours of questionable content to get to the good stuff.

There are lists out there on which clone wars eps are skippable vs not if you just want to be up to date with all of the key storylines and hit the good eps.

Rebels is harder because they had a habit of sneaking key storyline bits into the meh episodes.

Weird because I am split on this. I still game a lot but never got those feelings again that immersed me in the world. Sid Meiers Pirates in my C64 for example. the first CIV or Xcom. I still rack up significant game time but the immersion is less. This I attribute to me not being a kid anymore.

When I was a kid I gobbled up all movies, good, bad, ... Whatever I watched it all. Last decade I haven't watched that much movies anymore. I am in the middle if it is me not being a kid anymore or it is quality.

The difference is that I still put significant time in gaming although it doesn't make me immerse into it like I did as a Kid. Movies I just quit on most of them and watch a couple of good ones.

Maybe it is unfair. A good movie you watch once but even if in a year only 1 good game comes out you can still rack up a big amount of time ;)

I was able to get my kids obsessed with Star Wars before their first Disney trip - watched all of Clone wars, every main movie. Their favorite? Episode 2.

Breath of the Wild is objectively a masterpiece though.

These things are not incompatible in any way:

X is a masterpiece Some person doesn’t enjoy X

I think that's why they used "objectively"

It gets the big things really really right but it is missing human character in a lot of ways compared to Ocarina and MM. Not sure if it was infeasible to do both or if they were on principle trying to let the nature elements do 100% of the work.

Ok... that was my path and since I was not interested I did not know of Andor. Will have to take a look at it.

It really is brilliant. The screenwriter is Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, Bourne Trilogy).

Andor is the first SW content I have re-watched since Jedi.

[spends a few minutes on a mental inventory]

Well, okay: I watched all the SW eps with my son. (His words after seeing Ep1 were "Daddy, that wasn't a very good movie.")

Still, I rest my case. Andor is the first content that I would actually miss if it went away.

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