Like many reviewers have stated earlier than me (it generally feels just like the primary factor anybody is saying), Andor is nothing like the unique Star Wars exhibits Disney+ has launched up to now. For essentially the most half, reactions to that concept appear to be optimistic, and a big a part of me agrees with that. But the opposite a part of me noticed it barely in a different way than that. Read on for my assessment of Andor.
Andor goes again in time, tracing the much-alluded-to origins of Rogue One’s enigmatic insurgent Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). Cassian is arguably one of many solely current Disney franchise characters whose character growth in Rogue One – or, extra aptly, lack of time for it – actually warranted a prequel to be made, so regardless of my basic disappointment with nearly all of Disney+ properties, I walked into this one with fingers crossed.
In all equity, Andor already had two main issues working for it by way of differentiating it from the remainder of Disney’s streaming collection, the primary being the infallible likability of Diego Luna within the title function, and the second being Rogue One’s real human strategy to a Star Wars spin-off concept meant as a transparent money seize. In the tip, each of those components actually helped Andor alongside to turn into among the best properties within the area opera’s intensive canon.
Rogue One, in hindsight, is a seemingly irreplicable occasion in film franchise historical past. Its launch was completely timed, because the MCU made its ascension to the height of the zeitgeist with its promise that “It’s all connected,” and in-between the discharge of The Force Awakens, which reinvigorated the cultural Star Wars hype and The Last Jedi, which considerably dampened it. It would solely be two years till Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture, and Disney was snapping up each up-and-coming indie director to helm their upcoming franchise installments prefer it was a sport of Hungry Hungry Hippos. Disney, clued in by the success of the MCU, was altering their technique for Star Wars too, and Rogue One was the primary experiment.
Maybe as a result of it was an experiment of types, Rogue One bought to be one thing that Disney wouldn’t dare let considered one of its properties be these days – closing. Spoilers if you happen to haven’t seen it, I assume, however the film ends in a mushroom cloud that obliterates each most important character and each villain as Princess Leia speeds off in a spaceship above, holding onto “a new hope” within the type of the hard-won plans for the Death Star. There’s no bleeding one thing dry when the nuclear choice was already performed out. Like lopping a department from an overextending tree, with this ending writers Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy protected their characters from miracle resurrections or retconned lore or inexplicable cameos in future initiatives that may cheapen their characters’ potent sacrifices.
But, clearly, one unanswered query from Rogue One did stay, and therefore, Gilroy has returned now to helm Andor. And as I stated, if any Star Wars factor needed to be made into one other Star Wars factor, Cassian’s backstory was your best option. Out of any of those main Disney+ exhibits, Andor’s existence feels the least compelled and essentially the most earned. After all, Rogue One was primarily based on the thought of exhibiting a extra human, boots-on-the-ground-type take a look at the Rebellion, and Cassian’s character remained enigmatic at the same time as he acted because the strongest tether to that ideally suited. The pure path for Andor was to develop on that down-to-earth imaginative and prescient, which it did, arguably even higher than the film did.
Slow and methodical in its pacing, with neatly divvied-up plotlines unfurling one after one other, it struck me sooner or later in the course of Andor that I used to be barely watching a Star Wars property in any respect. And I don’t imply that as a grievance – if you happen to ever hear me asking for extra laser gunfights and CGI animal characters designed to promote plushies, shoot me, that’s the evil clone. What I imply by that’s to say that Andor renders conflicting ideas within the viewer about what, precisely, we are supposed to be understanding and taking away from this present.
Much like its mom property, Andor exhibits the underbelly of the Rebellion towards the Empire in a stage of intricacy the primary Star Wars motion pictures by no means reached. The collection begins with Cassian murdering two Imperial officers, and shortly we uncover that his flip from self-serving black market supplier to unfaltering Rebel hero had its origins extra in his want to flee from the legislation than any heroic sense of obligation. Characters traverse dicey political and interpersonal relationships whereas additionally making an attempt to maintain their help of the Rebel Alliance a secret. Cassian’s household and associates on his adoptive house planet of Ferrix sacrifice a lot to maintain his whereabouts hidden.
But most putting of all is the multi-episode arc the place Cassian finally ends up wrongfully incarcerated in a jail the place all of the inmates are compelled to compete with each other working in meeting as they stand on a flooring that their captors might electrocute at will, killing all of them. At the tip of the arc, the prisoners, led by his flooring supervisor Kino (a riveting Andy Serkis efficiency), uncover that when their sentences finish prisoners are solely relocated, not freed, and begin a jailbreak, from which solely a tragic few aside from Cassian escape. This a part of the collection is superb storytelling, and has justly gotten numerous reward, however to me its existence doesn’t really feel fairly copacetic with what Star Wars is right now, and that drew me out of the narrative. Can one thing made by one of many largest powerhouses in world tradition right now – one with a really public deal with the underside line, a historical past of mistreating workers and its arms deep in U.S. politics, as demonstrated by their half within the “Don’t Say Gay” controversy earlier this yr – actually successfully seize and laud rise up towards an unjust authority determine?
It’s revealed on the finish of the season that the components Cassian and his fellow prisoners had been assembling would in the future be part of the Death Star – whereas one thing I didn’t actually wish to know, “the Death Star was built by slave labor” will not be essentially the most stunning piece of lore that might have been dropped within the collection. But it additionally feels a lot, a lot too paying homage to actual life – the truth that Disney is constructing their empire on Disney+, churning out a brand new occasion present each week, spending a lot cash on these franchise exhibits solely to overwork and underpay essential crew members resembling VFX artists. No matter how properly because it’s advised, it’s a lot more durable to consider a story that roots for the little man because it comes instantly from the large man. The refreshing nuance of the present lessens figuring out that the manufacturing behind it’s affiliated with or presumably even collaborating in a model of the very injustices it seeks to sentence.
As quickly as that thought nagged at me, it was like a free thread, one I attempted to not pull at for worry of shedding my engagement with the remainder of the present. When you contemplate this insincerity of supply, instantly all the issues that made the present good – aside from Luna’s efficiency – turn into fairly threadbare. Not to say, Disney’s current bloodthirsty full-tilt into capitalizing on every little thing humanly doable clings to Andor’s leg, tugging at its sleeve like a spoiled little one. Only on Disney+ can your enjoyment of a present be interrupted by the query of which anthropomorphized animal or robotic character would turn into the star of its personal merch line. Is nobody else uninterested in tales the place you’re given one ending and but you continue to anticipate some last-minute Deus Ex Machina to fly in and open the door for yet one more film or mini-series, as a result of “Oh, no, that actor’s contract isn’t up yet?” Even if these acts of fanservice do not come, it’s the expectation that mars the expertise.
The better part about Andor is that it’s good. In spite of some much less attention-grabbing characters and plotlines (Pretty a lot simply Syril, for each), it’s from high to backside a strong manufacturing that takes an current beloved character and expands on their backstory in a reliable method. The worst half about Andor can be that it’s good. Because as of late, any time Disney hears “good,” they see greenback indicators, and pursuit of that’s sufficient to make sure that it gained’t keep good for lengthy. After all, Rogue One was good, and its success was a metaphorical greenlight for a film or TV collection about any and each character that has ever had greater than 5 minutes of display screen time, and our TVs are flooded with “must-see” occasion exhibits each week, till none of it’s particular anymore.
Although carried by its abnormally acutely aware subject material and stellar lead efficiency, Andor is lacking one thing in its soul. Circumstances exterior of its management make its messages and themes really feel tedious and insincere by default. It’s not that I’m suggesting that Disney is incapable of constructing a great present primarily based on their franchises; Disney+’s particular person monitor document merely means that they don’t care whether or not or not they do. Just as a result of one thing of high quality has been spit out of the machine doesn’t change the actual fact that it’s the product of a amount over high quality mannequin. I might hate to consider it, however I can’t assist however really feel that the second Cassian zips off on the finish of season 2, successfully setting in movement the occasions of Rogue One, Bix or Syril or Vel and even B2EMO will step into the important thing mild for his or her hero shot and “X Will Return” title card. I actually hope that gained’t occur.
But if it does, contemplate this my uber-cynical “I told you so.”
What did you consider Andor? Thoughts on the season, or what would possibly occur subsequent? Leave a remark down under!