What is Star Wars? The Jedi, lightsabers, fighter spaceships that go rrrrrrr? This is the way. Or so it was.
Andor is, without any unjustified superlatives, redefining the rules as we know them. It takes things that we never thought of. Puts them under a magnifying glass. And zooms in, until this galaxy far far away and long time ago starts making sense.
What we were used to was a space rodeo. Planet A, planet B, a hyperspace jump here, a skirmish there. The same bunch of characters sliding through a plot as straight as a laser beam. Almost like a video game. Meanwhile, the Empire is huge, it's colossal, but this colossus is hollow, eager to implode as soon as the magic spell "Use the Force Luke" is uttered. Entire planets blow up in seconds, never to be remembered - and nobody bats an eye.
Have you ever wished it was a tad more complex? A tad less fast-paced, a tad more nuanced? Less whimsical than Ewoks jumping. Less sugary than Baby Yoda cooing. I have. And today my wish has been granted.
Andor starts as a story of a no-name guy looking for his sister. And by the end of the first season we're neck deep in political intrigue, family drama, bitter duty that takes people on both sides of the eternal moral rift on epic crusades. We see love, loss, despair, conviction, we hear political speeches, whispers of intrigue, and, the most important of them all, a crunch of Imperial cereal and nagging of Imperial officers' mothers.
This is what Star Wars never dared to do before. In a galaxy so vast and with the main story so epic, we never got to see how security officers of some Imperial mining company bide their free time. How people deal with petty bureaucracy. How those silly retrofuturistic devices make sense within the confinement of someone's house. We only looked at the big picture, and the rest remained a backdrop. Mostly half-arsed and phony.
This time, we forget about the big picture. Emperor doesn't matter. Deathstar doesn't matter. We may hear about them, but they remain almost a myth. What we focus on, instead, is small (or not so much) people doing their business. Not just along the main plotline, but everywhere. The Galaxy becomes alive. And the Empire becomes more than just its space fleet and some goth guy who'd find your lack of faith disturbing. It's no longer a backdrop. It's a mechanism with many cogs, lots of them unique and spinning to their own distinctive rhythm. It almost doesn't even matter what the context is. The same kind of story could take place in Berlin in 1940 - and retain almost all of its relevance.
Who would've thought that taking both stars and wars from the recipe would do a Star Wars themed production a favour? But if you add amazingly written characters, detailed, diverse and complex, it becomes less of a surprise. Add not one but at least half a dozen parallel story lines, no single protagonist but a bunch of them, add a Game of Thrones like kind of intrigue, add an amazing cast of names old and new that isn't afraid to spend huge talent on incidental characters - and you'll start feeling a completely new flavour here.
A flavour of true innovation in the Star Wars lore. Driven by a story which may be labeled as a Rogue One prequel, but has already surpassed it in quality or impact. After all that bland chow of full feature films made since Disney took over, Mandalorian felt like a new hope for Star Wars. But Andor is where its glory returns for real. And I'm already eager to see what will come next.
Andor is, without any unjustified superlatives, redefining the rules as we know them. It takes things that we never thought of. Puts them under a magnifying glass. And zooms in, until this galaxy far far away and long time ago starts making sense.
What we were used to was a space rodeo. Planet A, planet B, a hyperspace jump here, a skirmish there. The same bunch of characters sliding through a plot as straight as a laser beam. Almost like a video game. Meanwhile, the Empire is huge, it's colossal, but this colossus is hollow, eager to implode as soon as the magic spell "Use the Force Luke" is uttered. Entire planets blow up in seconds, never to be remembered - and nobody bats an eye.
Have you ever wished it was a tad more complex? A tad less fast-paced, a tad more nuanced? Less whimsical than Ewoks jumping. Less sugary than Baby Yoda cooing. I have. And today my wish has been granted.
Andor starts as a story of a no-name guy looking for his sister. And by the end of the first season we're neck deep in political intrigue, family drama, bitter duty that takes people on both sides of the eternal moral rift on epic crusades. We see love, loss, despair, conviction, we hear political speeches, whispers of intrigue, and, the most important of them all, a crunch of Imperial cereal and nagging of Imperial officers' mothers.
This is what Star Wars never dared to do before. In a galaxy so vast and with the main story so epic, we never got to see how security officers of some Imperial mining company bide their free time. How people deal with petty bureaucracy. How those silly retrofuturistic devices make sense within the confinement of someone's house. We only looked at the big picture, and the rest remained a backdrop. Mostly half-arsed and phony.
This time, we forget about the big picture. Emperor doesn't matter. Deathstar doesn't matter. We may hear about them, but they remain almost a myth. What we focus on, instead, is small (or not so much) people doing their business. Not just along the main plotline, but everywhere. The Galaxy becomes alive. And the Empire becomes more than just its space fleet and some goth guy who'd find your lack of faith disturbing. It's no longer a backdrop. It's a mechanism with many cogs, lots of them unique and spinning to their own distinctive rhythm. It almost doesn't even matter what the context is. The same kind of story could take place in Berlin in 1940 - and retain almost all of its relevance.
Who would've thought that taking both stars and wars from the recipe would do a Star Wars themed production a favour? But if you add amazingly written characters, detailed, diverse and complex, it becomes less of a surprise. Add not one but at least half a dozen parallel story lines, no single protagonist but a bunch of them, add a Game of Thrones like kind of intrigue, add an amazing cast of names old and new that isn't afraid to spend huge talent on incidental characters - and you'll start feeling a completely new flavour here.
A flavour of true innovation in the Star Wars lore. Driven by a story which may be labeled as a Rogue One prequel, but has already surpassed it in quality or impact. After all that bland chow of full feature films made since Disney took over, Mandalorian felt like a new hope for Star Wars. But Andor is where its glory returns for real. And I'm already eager to see what will come next.
