In my opinion nothing ever came even close and I gave up on SW after the second Kylo Ren movie. Rouge one was cool though, also first episodes of Mandalorian..
Should I really try Andor after all the bad stuff Disney made?
A few days ago I watched the new LILO and Stitch and that was great, so maybe good people still work at Disney …
It's difficult to articulate Andor's quality to someone who hasn't seen it & is framing it in the context of things like Mandalorian. I can't stress enough that it's absolutely not just a "better" tv show than Mandalorian, &c. Not only is that an understatement, but it's also a fundamentally different beast to those shows. It's in a different category of quality.
And from there it was pretty much further and further downhill, with occasional glimpses of hope that were quickly dashed. I tried to watch a couple more entries after the prequels, but I finally gave up and wrote it off. I've missed almost the entire last 10 years of content.
A buddy at work finally convinced me to watch Andor, and I'm so grateful he did. It is superb. I read a reddit comment that said, "This is the show that made me feel ok to be a Star Wars fan again," and I can't agree more. In a lot of ways it still feels different from Star Wars. It's hard to explain because it's in the same universe, and has similar themes (which is why it doesn't feel totally out of place), but the tone is different. It's not about Jedi knights on a mission from destiny. It's about ordinary people making decisions, and choosing hope, in the face of the oppressive might of the Empire. But god is it good. Excellent writing, great acting, suspense, intrigue, nuance, and powerful emotional scenes (that are earned by proper story buildup).
So all of that is to say, it might not be exactly what you expect, and it won't simply be "Star Wars, again," but yes you should absolutely watch it. It's a fine work of art.
A big part of the problem is that these movies were written, basically, for 12-year old boys. You're not going to be able to get that spark back as an adult, and it's not easy to make a movie that appeals so strongly to both demographics. And much like wu-tang, star wars (and other fun stories) is for the children. Andor is at least more adult-oriented, I think.
So, do I like the new movies? No, I literally slept through the last two they were so boring, and I found the lack of coherent plot baffling. And yes, it does make me a little sad. But seeing little girls dressed up like Rey, I'm reminded that there are better things for me to care about.
But there's a reason why the star wars fandom has such a stank reputation, and it's 100% because adult men care way too much about something meant for children to a quite creepy extent. Two things immediately come to mind: 1) the explicit and physical sexualization of Leia, which I understand but definitely don't think was necessary in retrospect (at least not so ham-handedly), and 2) the abuse of the guy who did the Jar Jar Binks voice acting. It's not his fault Lucas wrote the character as a moronic alien speaking patois. I wasn't aware of the abuse until long after it was over, but I adored jar jar binks as an eight year old boy and didn't understand why he was thereafter sidelined. This makes me also question whether criticisms by adults of the new content is a reflection of what we actually loved growing up. Could a character as weird as Yoda make it into a film now without catering much stronger to people eager to deconstruct him into eg orientalist stereotypes? Would Luke really be allowed to kiss his sister? Would Han Solo be allowed to shoot first, really?
Even the sexualization of Leia—look I'm into pulp fiction, I understand what shallow sexual stereotypes can deliver in terms of entertainment, it wasn't and still isn't crazy. You can see the same phenomenon in the current explosion of mass-published erotica ("romance"). But the stories I've heard about what Fisher was subjected to make me look at the fandom with pretty severe prejudice. It makes nerds look bad, and I also think the success of Indiana Jones shows that this wasn't necessary. It's also not the easiest thing to explain to a child or teenager who grasps something of the power dynamic between Jabba the Hutt and Leia but doesn't have the social knowledge or, frankly, cynicism to make the sense of it we do as adults.
Season 2 of the ILM documentary on D+ goes into this, it’s a really fascinating documentary for folks into special effects and/or star wars.
I've never given up on Star Wars, though obviously there's little good to be said about the sequel trilogy and much of the Disney output. It took me a long time to even see Rogue 1, but I recognized it was something special, and Andor even moreso. (Though I will admit I like eps. 2 and 3 of the prequel trilogy more than I did at first.)
Star Wars after Jedi is garbage. Lucas got me with those awful prequels and Disney got me with the first 2 new movies. I will never watch another Star Wars anything outside of the original 3 movies.
Either you never really abandon your Star Wars fandom or you're lying. There can be no other choice.
One cannot be shat upon by corporate hucksters that much and still think, "okay. I'll give 'em one more chance to shit in my eyes and ears"
Is just not possible.
Update: Clone Wars especially benefits from finding a good best-of episode guide to help move the story along.
Turns out that makes for pretty good adult oriented star wars.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Shadows
Krennic's meeting on kalkite:
* structured like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference
* takes place at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kehlsteinhaus
the Aldhani heist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Tiflis_bank_robbery
Ferrix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles
Vel Sartha:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Dugdale
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolours_Price
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
Kleya Marki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Inayat_Khan
the Dhanis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_people#Discriminatio...
escape from Narkina 5:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_Prison_escape
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen_concentration_camp
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobibor_uprising
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrba%E2%80%93Wetzler_report
Rix Road:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporals_killings
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh#Funeral
Mon Mothma's speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Wels#Speech_in_opposition
Ghormans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance
Ghorman massacre:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabaa_massacre
* and perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_weavers%27_uprising
Obviously the comparisons aren't exact, but it's clear the show had a great many sources of inspiration (or maybe history rhymes as it always has).
You can't escape your influences, and you don't need to.
Compared to other Sci Fi movies at the time, Star Wars introduced a grungier, lived in universe where space ships got banged up and dirty, various species hung out in treacherous backwater saloons, and smugglers were just trying to make a living in the shadow of the Empire.
That's the reality Andor is set in, without the Jedi, and you really feels the difficulty of living in that reality without magic powers or a laser sword.
We are not. Andor is the best Star Wars ever made, full stop. IMHO, it surpasses, by far, anything Lucas ever did.
At least X-Wings, TIE Fighters, Corellian Corvettes, Imperial Shuttles and Star Destroyers. Not a fan of the Millennium Falcon tbh.
I recently rewatched season one in preparation for season two with my partner who hadn't watched it, and she wanted to give up around the same point I did previously and only powered through for the same reason. She was also happy that she finished
Andor (at least Season 1) is very slow, boring, suffers from "static heads talking at each other" cinematography of modern movies [1], main character is just not a great actor.
All that said, it's definitely worth a watch:
- most, if not all, major characters (apart from the protagonist) are very compelling, chew through every scene they are in, and are great matches for their parts
- Empire is finally shown as a proper huge, relentless, uncaring bureaucratic machine it must have been. Run mostly by efficient ruthless bureaucrats.
- Rebels are not angels, are not a single conformist mass of do-gooders
- The dialog is mostly great
It's a much better show than Mandalorian. It's arguably the best Star Wars after the original trilogy.
[1] Most modern productions are incapable of shooting "walking and talking at the same time". Most modern movies and TV shows have actors placed against each other rigidly, with not a hint of motion, as they say their lines at each other
The latter episodes were incredibly laboured, with the narrative being spelt out, as if to a child, by various characters. I think it may have always been like that, but the look and feel overwhelmed the ridiculous dialogue for a while.
If they were more clever with the body language of the main character, then the others wouldn't have had to carry the direction of the storyline so heavily verbally. Again, I think this was done well early, but kinda lost in the desperation for grogu storyline and screen time cuteness.
I'd have to watch it again, and right now it ain't worth the time.
Haven't seen Andor, but now it's "on the list".
It really nails the feeling of watching an old Western movie where a cowboy bonds with an innocent person who needs protection against all odds.
There’s a bit where the main character very obviously levels up and gets to choose a power-up. Then he sees somebody else with a different power-up and goes “wow, I should get one of those”. That confirmed to me that it wanted to be a videogame rather than a serious drama.