Star Wars Movie and Streaming Series Discussion

What a great show. Episodes one through three of season 2 started a little slow, but it just kept getting more intense, and more enjoyable with every episode. Episodes 7-12 were masterpieces.

That was an incredible finale and added so much to Rogue One and the Original Trilogy. Amazing writing, amazing character development, and it was all executed so well by the actors and actresses.

5 Stars
 
After dinner tonight, I put on Rogue One and my wife put her phone down for the whole damned thing, heh.
 
The boyo and I were lucky enough to go to a screening here in NY at the Paley Museum of episode 10, with a Q&A with Tony Gilroy and Diego Luna afterward. Man, episode 10 was incredibly powerful, and very well done; I loved it being a bottle episode- the 3rd to last episode of a series not featuring its main character felt really unique, but then again, as usual, the secondary characters here are my favorites too. Seeing it with a bunch of other Star Wars nerds was a treat. And hearing Tony talk about the show- he's such an articulate (and foul-mouthed) guy, and I love the line he toes of simultaneously caring about Star Wars, while also not really giving a damn about it. He couldn't care less about fan service or anything, he just wants to tell a good story. I know he doesn't want to do Star Wars for the rest of his life, but I hope he sticks around in some capacity.

As for the show itself, it really went from being my least anticipated show back when it was first announced to maybe my favorite one? At least of all the Disney+ stuff, but it's also, in my opinion, better than a lot of the films. But it also feels a little unfair to compare, because in so many ways it was very anti-Star Wars; you could take out all the ties to the franchise and it would still be a pretty damn gripping show on its own. Yet it also manages to be very Star Wars in its themes. Just works so well on so many levels. And it's been lovely seeing it kinda break through the nerd barrier in a way, especially with the Ghorman arc, and get widespread media attention as something to take seriously. I said it once and I'll say it again- it'll be a damn crime if it doesn't at least get some nominations.

I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting for the final arc; I think almost everything I thought would happen here happened back in 7-9, but it all felt very satisfying. I feel like everyone ended up where they should've, and I like that he didn't just kill everyone who wasn't in Rogue One. I'm sure we'll see most of them again (and admittedly, I'd love to see some, like Kleya, again) but even if we don't, I feel like they all had fitting, satisfying ends. We can easily imagine where they go from there- whether it's happy or not.

We did watch Rogue One again this morning, and it's nice to see how it all fit so smoothly, but also kinda recontextualizes things, at least as far as Cassian is concerned. It really did feel like the finale movie to Andor, in a way. I think the only thing we noticed that maybe kinda didn't make sense (but, being tired, we also could've just missed) was
I forget exactly what's said, but I think it was Tarkin mentions to Krennic that with the destruction of Jedha, all the loose ends of the Death Star leaks have been taken care of (or something like that), but I assume they know that Kleya got away? It's a small moment, and really doesn't detract from anything, but just something that stuck out.

All in all, I couldn't have been happier with how everything turned out. It would've been nice to see a little bit more about what went on between the arcs- seeing more of K2 integrating into Yavin, Dedra getting the files, etc., but I get that it wasn't entirely necessary. I just love what Tony created and would've loved to have spent more time with it. I know it's not entirely fair to compare the finale of Andor to the finale of other famous shows that went on for longer and didn't have pre-existing material to steer toward, but there are definitely some finales that I wish got as much love and care as this one did. Here's looking at you, Game of Thrones (which, to be fair, I quite liked from beginning to end, even if it was messy.) Damn, now I wanna see Tony Gilroy's Game of Thrones.....
 
Apparently in the early planning stage for season two there was talk of a Leia cameo, but Gilroy felt it was too much of a distraction. I get that and respect the choice, and the only reason I wish they had is probably because I want them to recast over deep fake* (and sounds like recasting would have been how she would have appeared).

*And I say this as someone okay with Tarkin and Leia in Rogue One.
 
Speaking of deepfakes and recasting, I haven't been following it too closely but gawd I hope Bratt gets a warm enough welcome that Disney realizes it is TOTALLY OKAY to recast actors when they are no longer available. Not that I think we need one, but if they do a Young Luthen series holy hells please don't slap Stellan's face on someone else's body. The soft de-aging he got in this show was actually quite tolerable but we don't need to go all in on that anymore. Find your next rising star in a young Leia if you have to bring the character back somewhere. (That being said, if we only explore places that never touch the original cast ever again I'd be thrilled. It's a huge galaxy; let us see more of it.)
 
docsilence said:
The soft de-aging he got in this show was actually quite tolerable
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Completely agree. The man has a bunch of sons too, one of them has got a look more like him than Bill!
They sorta did that already with the Gleeson brothers, playing father and son in different time periods.
docsilence said:
Find your next rising star in a young Leia if you have to bring the character back somewhere.
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I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I prefer exploring other eras now but you know they're gonna have something set in the OT era again.

I saw somewhere (I'm not sure where, I've been clicking on too many Andor articles the last 48 hours) someone did a list of why another/more Andor can't happen. They mentioned Gilroy stepping back, but also how expensive the show was compared to the audience watching. I am really hoping season two did better if for no other reason they deserved it. They also brought up how LFL wants to focus more on movîes than shows. I dunno, I hope they find a lane that works this well.
 
I think if they try to catch lightning in a bottle twice and make another Andor, they're destined to fail.

I hope the AUDIENCE can embrace that the IP is serving multiple audiences. Andor is prestige TV. Skeleton Crew is a delightful throwback kids show. Clone Wars paints with broader strokes to make the prequels better. Bad Batch is a shockingly good look at what happens when a terrible government abandons its veterans when it doesn't need them anymore. Rebels is a story about nobodies but told in an all-audiences way instead of the more cerebral work of Andor. Visions is Star Wars on magic mushrooms. Kenobi is a one-man rumination on your own failures. Tales From... are a gift to people who watched the animated shows. Mandalorian should hypothetically fulfill the Space Western vibes. The Acolyte was a Jedi Detective Story/Murder Mystery. I wish the audience would realize that not every production has to be the same, or for them specifically. (Hilariously, the ones who refuse to watch the animated stuff seem to be the toughest sell on this when it comes to live action, and they're the ones who have actively decided no, that section of the story over there isn't for me, and that's okay, I won't watch it.)

The MCU suffers from this, too, but I think Star Wars is better at not punishing you for not being a completionist, where Marvel kinda does kick you in the nuts if you skipped a TV show or film. You can absolutely watch Andor but not Rebels or vice versa, though arguably both are made better by the other.
 
docsilence said:
I wish the audience would realize that not every production has to be the same, or for them specifically.
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Agreed. I definitely haven't watched every Star War, as shocked as my six year old self would be. And I'm okay with that. More people need to just accept that something exists even if they don't get it.
docsilence said:
(Hilariously, the ones who refuse to watch the animated stuff seem to be the toughest sell on this when it comes to live action, and they're the ones who have actively decided no, that section of the story over there isn't for me, and that's okay, I won't watch it.)
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heh, that is hilarious.
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docsilence said:
The MCU suffers from this, too, but I think Star Wars is better at not punishing you for not being a completionist, where Marvel kinda does kick you in the nuts if you skipped a TV show or film.
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That's funny, I was just making the opposite argument in the MCU thread. Genuinely asking you to tell me because I can't really think of instances at the moment, where has Marvel punished for not watching every project? I know they're 'changing course' on this and making more things able to stand on their own, but I genuinely never thought of everything as crucial for everything else. Then again, I have seen just about every Marvel project. I always feel every project should stand on its own though, and tell you/remind you of what is needed to have in mind for this story. But that's why I also always have little things in my head like "well, if they were gonna reveal that character didn't really die, it should have been in this movie, because if they do it in some sequel or series, that's bullshit". Serials, great, but every season/movie needs to be somewhat self contained to me.

Bringing it back to Andor, that's why I appreciated the ending so much.

It's a prequel and we know what will happen to the main character, but we totally learned a new thing about what his death means, in that he's making the galaxy safer for Bix and their child. Bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter to me. And that ending helped Andor stand on its own too.
 
Not to derail the Star Wars thread with Marvel, but since you asked - the last three Star Wars shows could be watched with little context other than "this is Star Wars," but my partner turned to me during Thunderbolts and said "I have no memory who any of these people are except Flo and David Harbour." Thinking of someone who went into T-Bolts blind and skipped, say, the Black Widow film or Falcon and the Winter Soldier or the Ant-Man films you're potentially just confronted with a bunch of characters in costumes. BNW offers almost no context for Joaquin or the Eternals. Referencing the TVA in Deadpool without Loki (admittedly Deadpool is its own thing). Agatha without Wandavision or Strange2. The Marvels is a sequel to a film and two separate TV shows. (My main complaint about the Marvels is that they try to squeeze in the context of those three projects in the first 20 minutes and it comes across as frantic.)

Meanwhile when a Marvel project does NOT require you to know a bunch about the universe, a chunk of the audience gets grumpy ("where is Spider-Man or Doctor Strange during Born Again? They're in New York this whole time!")

I think the strength of Andor is it peppered OH HEY I KNOW THAT! references but made them so ancillary that a new watcher could enjoy it without the context. I also think Star Wars, because it has ALWAYS been a non-linear story, is often written in a way that circumvents that required viewing. Like, arguments could be made about what order you watch all of Star Wars in, and a lot of us (me included) reckon out of order is actually better! But the MCU is very chronological. I don't know where I'd tell someone to start the MCU other than at the beginning.

That being said, some more recent Star Wars projects teeter on that required viewing bit. I wonder how much of Ahsoka makes no sense without more of her backstory, and the Bo-Katan subplot of the Mandalorian. Where as Rogue One made perfect sense for years and is now changed by Andor, but you didn't need one to see the other.
 
An interesting quote from writer Tom Bissell about a cut Perrin moment:

"That was gonna be an interesting moment. Tony [Gilroy] performed it - Perrin just saying, 'I knew what you were up to. This whole time. They talked to me, every week they'd interrogate me, I never said a word. You didn't trust me. You could've trusted me.' And the heartbreak she would feel in that moment, of this guy that she'd pushed out could've been reliable. The double heartbreak of her walking away from her life, thinking she's dropping this deadbeat husband who never supported her, and then the double dagger stab... But that's head-cannon, that didn't happen."


I get why it was cut- would've messed with the pacing a bit, but it really would've been nice to have some sort of last moment between them. I got the gist of it- they were obviously growing further and further apart after Leida's marriage, but knowing Mon, I'm sure she still had some love in her heart for him, regardless of how cold and disconnected he could seem at times. Would've added some much needed dimension to his character, and added to the whole "I have friends everywhere" theme- even in the places where you think you're most alone. Would've been a nice mirror to Cassian, who has a bunch of people he knows he can trust and is afraid to lose, whereas Mon thinks she has so few people she can trust, when really, she has even more than she thought. I can see how having the scene would also be a little too much suffering for Mon- she's already sacrificed so much, we don't necessarily need it to become almost masochistic with her pain.

Edited to add- it didn't really occur to me until I saw someone mention it, but the person Perrin was with in the cab at the end was Leida's mother-in-law, so assuming she and Perrin are a couple as it's sort of hinted at, that would essentially mean his daughter is now married to his son. I guess there's a bit of gray area with the whole "in law" thing, but still- those Chandrillans are an interesting folk. I suppose it's not the first instance of slight incest in Star Wars
 
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docsilence said:
but since you asked
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Thank you, I genuinely appreciate that. And it was a lot! Heh. Some of those I think are more crucial than others, but definitely good points.
docsilence said:
I think the strength of Andor is it peppered OH HEY I KNOW THAT! references but made them so ancillary that a new watcher could enjoy it without the context.
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I definitely agree. Rogue One had some of that too. As I told @DarthDre758 while watching it last night, thank the Force Evazan and Ponda made it out of Jedha City before it was too late.
docsilence said:
I also think Star Wars, because it has ALWAYS been a non-linear story, is often written in a way that circumvents that required viewing.
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Also a great point, yeah.
docsilence said:
That being said, some more recent Star Wars projects teeter on that required viewing bit. I wonder how much of Ahsoka makes no sense without more of her backstory, and the Bo-Katan subplot of the Mandalorian. Where as Rogue One made perfect sense for years and is now changed by Andor, but you didn't need one to see the other.
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Mandalorian was great as is for the first two seasons, but after that... it felt like they wanted to do a new show covering all the things, but instead split it into a few. but I really think there's a great show that could have happened had they taken the main plot elements for Din, Bo-Katan, and Boba Fett from Mandalorian Season 3 and BOBF, and made one show. Maybe change the show to The Mandalorians, I dunno. But there's also the new republic stuff with the characters that used to work for Gideon in there, etc, and yeah I definitely agree about Ahsoka not standing on its own. Knowing there were things I wasn't aware of helped at least.
 
Thanks for that background information on the Perrin scene. I love that, in a story with so much moral grayness and pushing of ethical boundaries, they gave him some closure.
He might have been openly a cad and a bit of a bastard, but that idea - you never trusted me, you could have - adds a level of pathos to what could have been a one note character. I know in some of the legacy media he plays into the game to give Mon some coverage, and I think that last moment - is Perrin, who kept his mouth shut while his wife risked life and limb, whose personal sacrifice was relatively small and a bit selfish but not without merit by keeping her secret, allowed some peace in the end? Or did we see a moment where, once his job is done, he makes an enemy of a man who might quietly have him removed and the affair is a bit of quiet suicide?

Semi-related, there was a lingering look Sculdin gave Krennic at the party that made me think: that man is coming around and might be angry enough if not to rebel, at least to fuck off Coruscant and seek his fortunes elsewhere.

Ru--I honestly think two seasons of Mandalorian and then a fresh start with THE MANDALORIANS about the intertribal politics would have made for a better overall arc. It became a completely different show after a while, and while I like both, they don't feel fully connected. If we ever get an animated Din Djarin, give us a Tales from... about him before he meets Grogu, just being a relentless hardass on the Outer Rim or something. Space western at its purest.
 
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