Star Wars: Andor (2022) - released episode spoilers allowed

[Disco Stu 15,495]

1 minute ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

She's a rebel. That's what she does...rebels.

 

At least they had the sense to cut that line from the film.  I'd bet real money that was a Gilroy call.

[greenturnedblue 372]

Jyn.. I always knew you were a ....Rogue One

[mstrox 6,651]

Don’t think anyone posted this yet, and brother I’m not gonna wade back into a hundred posts about The True Spirit of Star Wars to find out.

 

 

[Tallguy 3,386]

12 minutes ago, mstrox said:

Don’t think anyone posted this yet, and brother I’m not gonna wade back into a hundred posts about The True Spirit of Star Wars to find out.

 

Thanks! Do you think that looks fun enough? Like Star Wars is? (WOW! 12 episodes!)

[mstrox 6,651]

For me, the throughline in all Star Wars media has always been hardcore nudity.

[Jay 37,359]

[Tallguy 3,386]

Whoa! Seriously? Wow. My hopes are way too high for this.

[Pellaeon 593]

5 hours ago, Jay said:

?

 

Well for example, here is Forest Whitaker acting the shit out of a scene, and Jyn Erso’s emotionless response.

 

 

No “yes, and…” here!

[Jay 37,359]

I see

[JNHFan2000 2,961]

I am happy to see that Tony Gilroy wrote the first 3 episode and last 2 himself. That means there was a clear beginning and end of this season from the start. I'm glad.

 

 

And I am very much looking forward to Britell's music. And I'm wondering how they'll release this and She-Hulk.

With 12 and 9 episodes there is a big chance a different release stategy is going to be used. For Andor, I actually would prefer 3 album, each for 4 episodes.

Or one big release of 2 hours maybe at the end.

I do feel 12 albums for each episode is a bit much

[Andy 4,127]

Sorry I missed the juicy discussion on dark tone and fun.  I sort of started it and bailed, because I was busy yesterday.

 

@Nick1Ø66 Nailed it with the Temple of Doom.  Sooo dark in concept, but arguably the most fun of all Indy films.

 

ESB is dark on paper, but as a kid, there was plenty of heroics and thrills to keep me glued to the seat.  I think we take for granted how imaginative and colorful all the new worlds were in  ESB at the time of its release.  The Hoth Battle was a loss for the rebels, but seeing Luke use that harpoon to singlehandedly take down a walker Starship Troopers style was one of the most thrilling moments of the Saga.  Wasn't the Asteroid Field sequence thrilling and funny at the same time?  I'd even argue that Luke shooting it out with Boba and the Stormtroopers while Yoda's theme heroically plays is a lot of fun to watch.  And Yoda was an absolute star.  I mean, Weird Al even wrote a song about him.  Artoo even got eaten and spit out.

 

Yeah, lots of bad things happen to the heroes, but this was for kids young and old.  I don't know, maybe fun was the wrong word.  It just feels like now that they have a large platform, Lucasfilm is parsing out Star Wars to try to satisfy different age groups.  You'll notice Jay posted a trailer for the Lego Star Wars in another thread, and no one had even one comment to say about it.  I think it's because that is not intended for us.  It's made for the kiddies.   Bad Batch is geared towards slightly older kids. And I think Andor is targeted strictly towards people who want grown-up Star Wars.  Rather than making just plain Star Wars, they seem to be stratifying it by age appeal.

 

I am expecting Andor to be made with quality, and it will appeal to a lot of people.  I'm just not excited about the speeches and monologues it will take to take these characters through their arcs.  I hope I am wrong about that, because I want to be thrilled, and I want to laugh while surprises unfold and heroic things are shown in imaginative ways.

 

 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Dan Gilroy is secretly the best Gilroy

[DarthDementous 1,059]

34 minutes ago, Andy said:

Yeah, lots of bad things happen to the heroes, but this was for kids young and old.  I don't know, maybe fun was the wrong word.  It just feels like now that they have a large platform, Lucasfilm is parsing out Star Wars to try to satisfy different age groups.  You'll notice Jay posted a trailer for the Lego Star Wars in another thread, and no one had even one comment to say about it.  I think it's because that is not intended for us.  It's made for the kiddies.   Bad Batch is geared towards slightly older kids. And I think Andor is targeted strictly towards people who want grown-up Star Wars.  Rather than making just plain Star Wars, they seem to be stratifying it by age appeal.

 

 

This is an underappreciated difference between the current approach of Star Wars and the old, it really gets back to the old adage of 'if you try and please everyone you'll end up pleasing no one'

I'd rather stories be tonally decided based on the kind of story they are, not trying to hit some kind of quota of one adult, one young adult, one big kid, one small kid audience

[Nick1Ø66 4,714]

It's always bothered me when Lucas calls Star Wars a "kids" movie. In the same way they're now doing animated Star Trek TV shows specifically aimed at "kids". Ostensibly to get "kids" into Star Trek.

 

I discovered both Star Wars and Star Trek as a kid. I didn't need a Star Trek "kids" show to do that. I never felt like those things were made for kids even then. In fact part of what made me love them is that I felt like I was looking into an "adult" fantasy world, and that they were treating me as an adult. And looking back on it, while I watched cartoons like every other kid, most of the stuff I fell in love with as a kid wasn't aimed at kids.

 

In France, the kids eat the same things the adults do. They're on to something there.

[GerateWohl 4,365]

I think, Lucas is just using that over simplified formula:

 

Adventure movie for adults - (splatter and sex) = Adventure movie for kids

[SilverTrumpet 638]

Isn't it kinda weird when Tony Gilroy is being pushed so hard as showrunner and writer for this series when his involvement in saving Rogue One was a little on the DL at the time? Like they tried keeping it a bit of a secret before, but assume you know this fact anyway as a way of getting butts in seats for this show.

[Tom Guernsey 2,284]

Isn't it perhaps just part of the general shift to try and make things more "realistic"? Whether the results are actually more realistic depends on your point of view, but nobody minded if Star Wars or Star Trek or Bond etc., was a little bit bloodless or unrealistic as that wasn't the point of them. Most striking for me with Bond; I don't really go to a Bond film for gritty realism so found the Craig movies hard work (good though many of them are). Star Wars is unlikely to ever move quite so far in that direction but the current producers do seem less confident in making relatively unambiguous fantasy adventures, although you could argue that George Lucas perhaps could have done with injecting a bit more authenticity to the prequels where the fairytale style fell somewhat flat. Then again, the same could go for other things, but let's face it, The Orville managed to update 90s Trek and be far more critically acclaimed than most of the recent attempts to update Star Trek (except for Strange New Worlds which is... more like old Star Trek).

 

I would caveat the above by saying that I do wonder if there's an amazing show or film to be made which presents a realistic portrayal of what it would be like to live under the Empire. You get a taste of it with the recent shows, notably in Obi-Wan (which are perhaps some of its strongest moments) but in reality, the Star Wars galaxy's citizens would be living under a terrifyingly powerful and brutal regime, the day to day implications of which haven't always been made explicit.

[Tallguy 3,386]

2 hours ago, Andy said:

I think we take for granted how imaginative and colorful all the new worlds were in  ESB at the time of its release.

 

I do not. I don't think that the "galaxy jaunting" tone of the first two films has ever been matched. Maybe it's just because they ran out of planet archetypes and then in the Prequels / Clone Wars you get into more broadly fantasy planets.

 

32 minutes ago, SilverTrumpet said:

Isn't it kinda weird when Tony Gilroy is being pushed so hard as showrunner and writer for this series when his involvement in saving Rogue One was a little on the DL at the time? Like they tried keeping it a bit of a secret before, but assume you know this fact anyway as a way of getting butts in seats for this show.

 

Did he not get a screenplay credit? (I'm a little murky on the whole back and forth of RO.)

 

There's a lot of wiggle room between "realistic" and "fantasy". We watched The Guns of Navarone last night. It wasn't fantasy, for sure. But it certainly wasn't Saving Private Ryan. A lot of the beats made me think of Rogue One, actually.

[Faleel 5,347]

2 hours ago, DarthDementous said:

I'd rather stories be tonally decided based on the kind of story they are, not trying to hit some kind of quota of one adult, one young adult, one big kid, one small kid audience

So basically don't do like the publishing thing with YA Novels etc., like the EU with stuff like Young/Junior Jedi Knights, and the Jude Watson prequel era books

[Tom Guernsey 2,284]

4 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

There's a lot of wiggle room between "realistic" and "fantasy". We watched The Guns of Navarone last night. It wasn't fantasy, for sure. But it certainly wasn't Saving Private Ryan. A lot of the beats made me think of Rogue One, actually.

 

That's quite a good comparison actually... 1960s WW2 films compared to something from 20/30 years or more later. Those old WW2 films were jolly adventure movies, pretty bloodless and anodyne. Only when you get to things like Apocalypse Now (although I'd argue that's a bit more grand guignol melodrama than specifically gritty realism a lot of the time), then onto SPR or The Thin Red Line or Dunkirk or whatever, where death is violent, unpredictable, awful and immediate.

[SilverTrumpet 638]

19 minutes ago, Tallguy said:

Did he not get a screenplay credit? (I'm a little murky on the whole back and forth of RO.)

 

He did, but it's fairly well known (thought not promoted to high heaven) that he was the one brought in to basically redo the entire movie. I know he did a ton of rewrites and supposedly he directed the reshoots, which were as much as half the movie. That's why the trailers were basically all deleted scenes. 

 

They must have made some deal with Edwards where he could still sit front and center during promotional interviews and events, but it was basically Gilroy who saved the film. Now they're using his name to promote Cassian the show and Gareth Edwards is in witness protection. 

[Pellaeon 593]

Yeah, for years any suggestion that Edwards was fired and replaced with Gilroy as director of Rogue One (same MO as with Solo and TRoS) was severely scowled upon as some sort of anti-Disney hysterical conspiracy theory. Now the open secret is a selling point. Interesting point.

[artguy360 1,843]

Rogue One was the first instance of Lucasfilm scrambling to course correct SW projects. Sadly, it has since become the norm. It worked for Rogue One, at least.

[greenturnedblue 372]

You guys haven't heard? They brought Gareth Edwards in to rewrite and reshoot Andor last minute, that's why it's delayed a month

 

/s

 

 

[Nick1Ø66 4,714]

1 hour ago, artguy360 said:

Rogue One was the first instance of Lucasfilm scrambling to course correct SW projects.

 

Not true. The first was George Lucas personally finding, and destroying, every home VHS recording of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

[Edmilson 7,441]

Disney should really give a Marvel movie to Gareth Edwards as a "thank you" gift for being a good sport with R1.

[DarthDementous 1,059]

12 hours ago, Roll the Bones said:

So basically don't do like the publishing thing with YA Novels etc., like the EU with stuff like Young/Junior Jedi Knights, and the Jude Watson prequel era books

Not necessarily, that there exists a range of content targeted at different audiences doesn't mean that each story was devised to fit each spot in a quota. You would likely find a significant disparity of the amount of content between one type of audience and another. As far as I'm aware whatever the particular approach is on the publishing side of things hasn't changed much between the EU and the Disney Canon

On the other hand, the media landscape is just fundamentally different now, they almost by necessity have to go with this quota approach because they're trying to fill out a streaming service which demands variety. The sad reality is that post-Lucas, Star Wars is predominantly driven by corporate mandates instead of creativity and desire to tell stories. Disney+ is just another rope tying the creatives down

[Jay 37,359]

 

[Tallguy 3,386]

Squeeeee!

 

Maybe I'm just seeing my own expectations here. But this could be really really cool.

[Nick1Ø66 4,714]

Is there anything that Stellan Skarsgård isn't in? Damn guy gets around.

 

 

[Tallguy 3,386]

16 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

Is there anything that Stellan Skarsgård isn't in? Damn guy gets around.

 

 

 

Thor Ragnarok? 

[Jay 37,359]

Diego Luna Says ‘Andor’ Is Going to Challenge What You Think You Know About ‘Rogue One’

[Tallguy 3,386]

14 hours ago, Jay said:

Diego Luna Says ‘Andor’ Is Going to Challenge What You Think You Know About ‘Rogue One’

 

"It's going to assert that Michael Giacchino's score is a work of underappreciated genius. Oh, the hate mail we're going to get!"

[Jay 37,359]

Andor's Genevieve O'Reilly brings Mon Mothma into the spotlight: 'We really get to develop her as a character'

[JNHFan2000 2,961]

There is a special look on Disney+ with a few insides by Gilroy and Luna and a full scene from the series with Luna & Skarsgard.

 

They talk a little about the music and they speak of the music already being there on set. Which means Britell worked for a very long time on it. That, to me, sounds very promising. I can't wait to hear what he has come up with.

The music in the scene is a mix between Britell's orchestral style and his more contemporary style. But it's not enough to form an opinion yet.

 

This looks like it could be the best SW series yet. I'm looking forward to it.

[DarthDementous 1,059]

For those that don't have Disney+, here's the extended clip:
https://streamable.com/ymugoo

 

Honestly I'm...kind of impressed? The dialogue did a pretty good job fleshing out these characters and even managed to have a few moments of emotional connection which was aided by some pretty good performances (especially from Stellan). The action itself was fun, creative and frenetic, and I was overjoyed to see characters actually use cover because it ramped up the tension of the scene way higher than idiots standing out in the open. The chaos of it actually brought me back to the action from the OT

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Never underestimate a Gilroy

[LSH 968]

23 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Never underestimate a Gilroy

 

I've got that embroidered on a towel.

[enderdrag64 624]

5 hours ago, JNHFan2000 said:

They talk a little about the music and they speak of the music already being there on set. Which means Britell worked for a very long time on it. That, to me, sounds very promising. I can't wait to hear what he has come up with.

The music in the scene is a mix between Britell's orchestral style and his more contemporary style. But it's not enough to form an opinion yet.

I was confused by this. I thought film scores were generally written after the spotting sessions. If Britell already wrote music before they ever started filming does that mean there's no sync points at all?

[Disco Stu 15,495]

5 minutes ago, enderdrag64 said:

I was confused by this. I thought film scores were generally written after the spotting sessions. If Britell already wrote music before they ever started filming does that mean there's no sync points at all?

 

If I had to guess, I'd imagine it's more like when Giacchino recorded suites for Jupiter Ascending before filming.  Then there was both new underscore, underscore written using themes from the suites, and the suites themselves edited to picture.

[Faleel 5,347]

I thought it was interesting, that it was inplied it was performed on set by musicians.

[Jay 37,359]

New trailer

 

 

[Jay 37,359]

First Andor Reactions

[Tallguy 3,386]

Well THAT seems promising.

 

"Cassian Andor is a very, very different kind of Star Wars protagonist. Shifty. A con artist. A liar."

 

Gee. I can think of at least two of them. But maybe this just lets you spend enough time with him to notice.

[Jay 37,359]

Diego Luna and Adria Arjona Recorded Their Character's Spanish Dub

[GerateWohl 4,365]

In ancient times actors were sometimes even playing a scene in multiple languages, in english and e. g. in spanish so the spanish takes of the scene could then be used for the spanish version of the film. 

[Jay 37,359]

Big new Rolling Stone article with interviews with Tony Gilroy, Diego Luna, and more

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/andor-explained-rogue-one-tony-gilroy-timeline-diego-luna-interview-1234589713/

[Tallguy 3,386]

I didn't pay attention for the other shows, but did Book of Boba or Obi-Wan get this kind of coverage?

[mstrox 6,651]

Probably not Boba, but Obi-Wan got similar hype.  It had a Vanity Fair cover story.

[Jay 37,359]

Alan Sepinwall's review

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/andor-review-1234593959/