The cinematography, editing, writing, and overall feel of this show far exceed any Star Wars movie I've seen. I had long since written off the Star Wars franchise as a shameless cash grab since the original movies but they proved they could do something cool with it.
I'd definitely watch a new movie if it were handled by the same team that made Andor. Prequel, sequel, side story, or re-telling of the originals.
manmal · 1d ago
The prison episode is a masterpiece and would have been an amazing movie on its own. It‘s weird how zany the other SW shows and even movies look now in comparison. I‘m really sad there can’t be another season.
sbarre · 1d ago
I am hoping that they follow this up with stories set between the original trilogy movies, with some of the characters that were expanded on in the Andor show (and new ones too).
It feels like there's plenty of room in the timeline between those movies to keep telling stories about the rebellion against the Empire, in the same tone as Andor.
No comments yet
brianzelip · 1d ago
Be sure to watch for after the credits of the last episode of season 1!!
m3kw9 · 20h ago
I find the credit heist escape was epic
mtillman · 1d ago
Loved Andor. Unlikely Gilroy would do more Star Wars and if he did, he probably wouldn’t be given another $650M for a side character. Season 2 was $290 and that was after their budget was capped by Iger, they tried to spend more.
On one hand I want to say "fuck it, let them have whatever the fuck they want", given they should've known how well-received the show is by critics and viewers alike and how they should consider it basically the savior of the Star Wars brand. On the other hand, I guess it's still a business, at the end of the day.
toyg · 1d ago
> the savior of the Star Wars brand
I think Rogue One is the best Star Wars ever and Andor is in the same vein. But.
The savior of the Star Wars brand is always going to be the latest lightsaber-fest for 10-year-olds. That creates customer loyalty that will survive forever. Those kids then grow up and get to bitch about the new lightsaber-fest, and to fawn over the artsy drama.
physicles · 22h ago
Did customer loyalty survive the latest round of terrible movies and TV shows? I’ve long since written off anything Star Wars, except maybe the Mandelorian (didn’t watch season 2 though) and Andor.
toyg · 16h ago
Well, you did watch Andor, so you'll probably give a spin to the next decently-reviewed thing aimed at your demographic. Most of SW production is for children and teenagers.
fernandopj · 1d ago
Andor S2 was around $350M and most likely paid for itself and some. [1]
> On the other hand, I guess it's still a business, at the end of the day.
You're right, in the sense that Andor was an exception regarding every other SW show on Disney+ for the past 4 years. All had high production costs and seems like Andor is the only one which recouped itself. Acolyte was a spectacular viewship failure.
So the business logic would be to cap costs, most likely in half for now on. I don't have high expectations of Disney learning the right lessons from Andor & Tony.
How exactly does a streaming show pay? Is it measured in new subscriptions when viewers hear the buzz and sign up to the service due to that show? Otherwise, the users stream it, or don't, they pay the same either way.
The inverse question too: why do streaming platforms cancel popular shows? Watcher count doesn't seem to be the metric I think it is.
ghaff · 1d ago
For quite a while, the further the films/series are separated from the original trilogy, the better they seem to be.
ninkendo · 1d ago
I maintain that the Jedi are the most boring thing about Star Wars, and the less about them we hear in a story, the better. Andor managed to go the whole series run without a single lightsaber going brrr, and it’s the best Star Wars outside of the original trilogy.
The empire is a compelling thing to make stories about, and what Andor does well is actually make the whole thing believable. It’s not a bunch of cackling supervillains aiming to be maximally evil, like it is in so many of the movies… it’s an actually-believable thing, filled with characters with their own motivations, none of whom are explicitly evil by themselves, but through all of them evil is done. The episodes of season 1 when Andor is arrested and sent to prison are the most compelling and actually-scary depictions of the empire ever put to film. It’s just that good.
fmajid · 6h ago
What I really liked about The Acolyte is that it showed how evil the Jedi really are behind their holier-than-thou propaganda.
Whoever governs really should implement a R&D program to eradicate the midi-chlorian infestation and rid the galaxy of the scourge of both Jedi and Sith in one fell swoop.
lucideer · 1d ago
Ironically Andor is one of the closest to A New Hope narratively.
e3bc54b2 · 1d ago
It is one of the reasons I love Andor so much. Rogue One was so good that it elevated a A New Hope and Andor in turn (especially after S2) elevates Rogue One in similar fashion. The movie/show on their own are some of the greatest, but they don't limit their achievements to themselves and like a rising tide lift whoever they connect to. It is really really hard to pull that off, and people in Andor somehow managed that twice.
ghaff · 1d ago
It ties in but isn't really part of the main storyline except incidentally. You could say the same thing about Rogue One though the tie-in is even stronger in that case. The Mandalorian is pretty separate other than baby yoda.
lucideer · 1d ago
It's not part of the main storyline of Luke's journey as an individual & the Jedi order but it is a very big part of one of the main storylines of a ragtag bunch of rebels sticking it to the empire.
A storyline which I'd argue was strongest in A New Hope & the initial trilogy & was weakened by the increased focus on individual storylines in the anakin & rey trilogies.
sho_hn · 1d ago
I'd say this is giving the Anakin trilogy an unfair shake: While I don't enjoy watching the prequels much for being clumsy films, you have to hand it to Lucas for trying to significantly expand his space opera by adding in galactical politics, etc. Any thrust to make Star Wars about ideology and governance (and specifically parliamentary democracy vs. facism) really came from the prequels, and arguably you couldn't have Andor without their template just as much as A New Hope delivers the plot hooks for its premise. In retrospect, while its flowering may be Andor, it's the prequels that gave the franchise a bigger signature and message than just being a family drama. Taken together they now make Star Wars about something, which I think it never really had before. "What's that star war about?" is something you can answer now.
jimbokun · 19h ago
I don't think any of the politics from the prequel trilogy lands. It's too cartoony for that.
Whereas Senator Mothma's story arc had me engrossed from beginning to end. From the complexities of a Senator's social life, to her financial difficulties, to the medieval like politics of marrying off her daughter for the sake of a political and financial alliance, to her risking more and more, to her brave and powerful speech condemning the empire.
There is nothing in the prequels that hits nearly as hard. Because it's all dialog the audience isn't paying attention to because the Jedi stuff is more engaging, and because the political stakes never seem that great.
sho_hn · 11h ago
Sure, the execution was crappy - but he chose to make one of his new main characters a Senator, had the Senate as a set piece, etc.
alextingle · 7h ago
One of the original movie's main characters was a senator. It's hardly original.
toyg · 1d ago
Yes, the overall narrative of the prequels was good and very promising. It's so unfortunate that they turned out to simply be shockingly bad as movies - "clumsly" really doesn't describe how stodgy and badly put-together they were.
I honestly hope Disney will eventually remake them from scratch, with the excuse that FX have progressed dramatically since then. They could even reuse McEwan, considering he's supposed to be an older character already.
clayhacks · 7h ago
There is politics in the original trilogy. It’s just more thematic than literal political manoeuvring. The story of a rag tag group of rebels fighting against a massive entrenched empire is a political one by nature. And Lucas has directly stated his inspiration for that dynamic was the Vietnam war. And spoiler alert America isn’t the rebels. I think Andor does a great job of fleshing out the more day to day feelings of being in an era of rebellion against an empire bent on domination
fmajid · 6h ago
The Simpsons had it right when they parodied Episode 2 as a boring story about redistricting.
JohnBooty · 9h ago
you have to hand it to Lucas for trying to
significantly expand his space opera by adding
in galactical politics
No, absolutely zero credit.
While "evil guy corrupting a democracy" is certainly a noble and relevant thing to explore, the prequels don't explore that in any useful or fun or insightful way. It's literally just an excuse for pew pew pew lasers and spaceships and laser swords.
(Remarkably, they also make the democracy, and the Jedi who defend it, seem almost universally super boring and dumb and uncool. Making Jedi uncool is some kind of special achievement...)
Even as a real-world allegory, it sucks.
The bad guys in real life aren't even remotely like the Sith, who are physically twisted freaks that are explicitly like "yep! we're evil!"
Real-life bad guys are often good looking and most of them think they're actually doing the right thing.
jimbokun · 20h ago
Andor and Rogue One are better prequels than the prequel trilogy in that they better match the tone of the original Star Wars and do a better job filling in the parts of the back story viewers care about.
How did the Rebellion start? How was it organized? What led to building the Death Star? How did they get the plans to give to Leia to give to Luke?
The only part of the prequel trilogy relevant to the story in A New Hope is the final battle between Anakin and Obi Wan.
JohnBooty · 9h ago
If the prequels taught me anything, it's that these questions are usually better left unanswered.
What's cool about the Force isn't the mechanics of how it works. What's cool about the Force is that it's a mystical thing that's everywhere, binding all living things together.
And we honestly don't need to know how the Rebellion started. It doesn't matter! They are the good guys, and they are messy but kind and loving and cool and they are rebelling against the cold and mean (but also sometimes cool) bad guys. In fact, the more dumb shit I know about them the less I can project myself onto them and see myself in their eyes. Because I have rebelled against mean authoritarian shit before, or at least dreamed of it, but I have never been involved with trade disputes or galactic senates or weird old religions.
This is true IMO 99.99% of the time.
Shockingly to me, Rogue One and Andor are so well done that they are exceptions to the rule.
twoodfin · 1d ago
My main (mild) criticism of the now-complete Andor->Rogue One arc is that it only put its toe into the waters of the Death Star.
Giving that concept a thematic heft well beyond its Flash-Gordon-supervillain origins appeared “fully armed and operational” in the story, but in the end it barely rises to subtext.
toyg · 1d ago
But there is no conflict, no interest, in exploring a building site. What are you going to talk about, contractors installing pipes? How they get the best canteen food?
It's actually better for the Death Star to be unseen, so that its full horror can only be imagined - and hence, becoming greater - in our minds.
And as has been explored the economics don’t really make sense.
JohnBooty · 9h ago
Yeah. For that level of resources they probably could have just had ten Star Destroyers orbiting every known inhabited planet.
But real-world warfare history is full of these expensive disasters that, in hindsight, were spectacularly dumb ideas.
I don't think the Death Star was meant to be practical. More of a terror weapon or trump card, akin in some ways to nuclear weapons whose true value transcends their practical value. The destruction of Alderaan felt like an allegory for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
alextingle · 7h ago
The US Navy has aircraft carriers, which are every bit as ridiculous as a Death Star. They are utterly useless against well armed opponents.
But they still got built, for good political, and psychological reasons that have nothing to do with cost effectiveness.
JohnBooty · 2h ago
Not a good analogy.
In WWII they were absolutely invaluable against a peer enemy in the Pacific theater. They were the single most important bits of military hardware in that war.
They grew more vulnerable over time, first to peer enemies and eventually to rebels funded by sorta-peer enemies like Iran. In 2025, I don't think anybody doubts that a sustained saturation attack would fail to sink or at least prevent a carrier from functioning.
(Though it's also worth noting that the Houthis haven't been able to hit one yet, even with Iranian backing)
Still, a carrier group allows the US to project a tremendous amount of force anywhere in the world, and if a nation state hits one they're going to face an absolutely tremendous amount of military wrath from the US, which kind of gives them a strength beyond their literal combat capability.
dragonwriter · 7h ago
> The US Navy has aircraft carriers, which are every bit as ridiculous as a Death Star.
They aren't ridiculous in the real world. They are in some theoretical worlds with alternate assumptions about what wars actually happen, but...
> They are utterly useless against well armed opponents.
They are quite useful, though, against the opponents that the US has actually fought against since WWII, though, which are mostly not with opponents that would be “well-armed” in the sense needed to make your claim true, are often also outside of the effective force projection radius of such opponents, and often would be inconvenient for US force projection without having convenient sea-mobile airbases with a air wing the same rough size as the median national air force.
ghaff · 4h ago
Yeah. They project force in a way that battleships no longer can. And whether or not they're really used, the fact is that they can be used. And very few counties want to mess with a US aircraft carrier and its escort surface fleet.
twoodfin · 20h ago
I mean exploring why the Empire builds the Death Star in the first place.
There’s a version of Andor that does a bit more than hint that the Death Star is the ultimate (and ultimately doomed) metaphorical reply to Nemik’s manifesto.
In the final analysis, the Death Star is not about power. It’s not about control. It’s a choice, meant to be the last choice for the Rebellion: Submit, or lose everything you love, everything you were, are, will be, in an instant.
But, in the end, it’s this totalizing impulse that is the Empire’s critical weakness. There are always cracks in the edifice of tyranny. Other choices.
marcosdumay · 1d ago
You could have the exact same story on a completely different universe, without using any of the Star Wars IP by doing only superficial adjustments.
But also yes, it's the closest thing to the original theme since the second movie.
colordrops · 1d ago
The second season is heavily tied to in-universe events that lead to Rogue One and A New Hope.
meowface · 1d ago
The first sequel just mirroring the original movie was so lame. Reference-baiting.
ghaff · 1d ago
It's probably hard for the producers not to do fan service. But they can go overboard.
rockemsockem · 1d ago
I've made peace with the fact that "Star Wars" basically means nothing w.r.t. what kind of story I can expect, both in terms of quality and variety of story. Gotta look for talented people in charge of the project and make guesses at quality that way now. I'm hopeful that with Donald Glover running the Lando movie that it'll be good, but otherwise IDK of anything else in Star Wars that I'm really looking forward to...
Arkhaine_kupo · 1d ago
I would recommend Skeleton Crew. Its def aimed at younger crows but if you have nieces/nephews or kids of your own its a delight.
Basically treasure Island/ goonies in space, it is campier than Andor but does what it aims for amazingly. Cause andor can get quite heavy on the fighting fascism and sometimes finding a treasure map is more the vibe than seeing holocaust planning meetings
I didnt watch anything mandalorian past season 2, never watched boba fet, obiwan or ahsoka because I thought it would be Dave Filoni getting action figures and bumping them together, and friends who watched them agree with my intuition. But yeah of the new star wars stuff Andor and Skeleton Crew are both amazing in very different ways
duxup · 1d ago
Skeleton Creis basically the movie Goonies .. but Star Wars, and it’s tons of fun.
They should make a new Skeleton Crew show every year with a whole new cast.
It really hits the lighthearted adventure button that to me is the core of Star Wars.
epolanski · 12h ago
I gave it a try, and it wasn't bad indeed, but honestly I have too much fatigue towards all this repetitive milking of IPs to keep my interest up.
JodieBenitez · 1d ago
> I had long since written off the Star Wars franchise as a shameless cash grab since the original movies but they proved they could do something cool with it.
I'd argue they already proved this with Rogue One. Too bad we had the Abrams/Johnson dumpster fire.
iainmerrick · 1d ago
Yeah, it’s honestly hard to find a weak element. The actors are all great, the music is great (with an interesting progression from electronic to orchestral), the set design is incredible. It’s both timeless and topical.
No comments yet
cwillu · 1d ago
You're aware of Rogue One, right?
meowface · 1d ago
I watched it for the first time immediately after finishing Andor. Definitely better than the other Star Wars films but definitely not as good as Andor. (I'm aware the showrunner of Andor co-wrote Rogue One, but Andor really seems like a different tier.)
mcv · 1d ago
Andor is by far the best Star Wars. Rogue One is very good, and the only movie that's in the same league as the originals, but Andor is so much better.
I don't think we'll see anything on the same level as Andor again; they already cut the original plans from 5 seasons to 2; it's simply too expensive and costs too much time to do it this well. But I do hope that future Star Wars shows will try to follow at least some aspects of its example: better writing, more human stories, focus on core themes, not on fan service or milking established characters.
Of course production values will be lower, but I can live with that if they get the other stuff right.
boppo1 · 1d ago
>5 seasons
Thank god. There's not enough meat on the bone, the writing would never have been good enough to support this.
We need more excellent, tightly spun stories.
mcv · 1d ago
I was actually hoping for 4 seasons. Considering how they put 4 different, excellent stories in season 1. Season basically told a single story (the Ghorman massacre) spread out over 4 years. There were many moments where I'd hoped they'd dive a bit deeper into some other aspects, like what would become of the Maya Pei Brigade, the stolen TIE Avenger, other missions where we see Andor grow into the expert spy that he's clearly become. And of course more about how they bring the various parts of the rebellion together, the move to Yavin, etc.
I think there was more than enough room to fill at least another season. Maybe two.
But hey, I'm more than happy we got this much.
colordrops · 1d ago
3 seasons would have been perfect. Season 2 was too packed.
manmal · 1d ago
Really? I was a bit annoyed about the multiple „1 year later“ jumps. There‘s plenty that happened in that time that we haven’t seen.
LaGrange · 1d ago
It built tension by itself. Time skips reinforce the idea that things are _moving fast_.
If we didn't have them, it would turn it into a drag. A dramatic year looks much more impressive when you compare it to what was a year before, than when you look at it day by day.
carrychains · 1d ago
That "cut" happened before they even started working on the show. Despite the original thought of 5 seasons, it was essentially planned for 2 seasons right from the start.
kranke155 · 22h ago
From Gilroy’s own telling, it happened during the filming of Season 1 in Scotland? That seems to be what he told Happy Sad Confused on their recent interview.
He realised that everything, absolutely everything in Star Wars needs to be designed, that it took ages to do, and that it would be forever to make 5 seasons. So he pitched to Diego to only make one more.
meowface · 1d ago
>they already cut the original plans from 5 seasons to 2
Wow that's a shame. I had no idea. Assuming they could've kept up the quality, that would've been amazing for their reputation and retention.
rockemsockem · 1d ago
> hey already cut the original plans from 5 seasons to 2; it's simply too expensive and costs too much time to do it this well.
From some of the interviews I saw it seemed like the time aspect was the big driver. One in particular Diego Luna was talking about a conversation he had with Gilroy and Gilroy was like "God it'd take us 10 years to make this". I get that logistically that can be a tough thing to do with actors, and also it'd be a bit odd to have Diego Luna be very noticeably older in Season 5 than he is in Rogue One.
techpineapple · 1d ago
This explains one of my criticisms of the show, which is I would have really like to see more of the development of the rebellion on Yavin, as it stands they sort of hint at it, but I was somewhat unsatisfied by the explanation or fabric of that evolution. Lots of core plot progression are showed through images, when the whole point of a tv show is that you should be able to show it more gradually.
These I think were 12 episode seasons, maybe five 8 episode seasons would have been better.
andrepd · 1d ago
The originals are also very mid-tier, especially the last one. It survives on nostalgia mostly.
mcv · 1d ago
Return of the Jedi does have the most important scene in all of Star Wars: the confrontation between Luke and the Emperor. The rest of the movie has plenty of shortcomings, but that scene more than redeems it.
peeters · 1d ago
They did a really good job tying Andor into Rogue One, but yeah Andor is just far better in terms of pacing, etc. And because they have to rush the plot in R1 (meet Jyn, she doesn't care about the rebellion, oops never mind now she's leading the rebellion) it ends up seeming much shallower emotionally. They also seemed to have to have a bit of fan service.
Rogue One was my favourite Star Wars production before Andor, now I wish they could throw it away and remake it as Andor Season 3. It deserves to be told in full.
modeless · 1d ago
If by fan service you mean the scene where Darth Vader is at his most terrifying in the whole franchise, I think it was handled perfectly.
peeters · 22h ago
Not referring to that actually, I think that was actually a great bridge to Ep 4 that helps put the story in context for casual fans.
More the presence of the Force and Jedi lore. They were so close to not having that be part of Rogue One but were still forced to include the mystical super beings in some way. Andor was able to fully detach from that baggage, focusing on the little people doing their part. And when they did bring in the Force healer in the second season, it was exactly how you'd expect average people to respond to a mystical power that you didn't directly witness. Hope, faith, skepticism, denial, rejection.
As far as Vader goes...it does make you wonder if he's just toying with Obi-Wan when he meets him like 3 days later...
jimbokun · 19h ago
> it does make you wonder if he's just toying with Obi-Wan when he meets him like 3 days later...
I disagree.
If you set aside the difference in special effects capabilities, Vader is clearly being cautious in the light saber fight with Obi Wan on the Death Star. And we know that's because Obi Wan kicked his ass on Mustafar (THE KENOBI MINI SERIES NEVER HAPPENED I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT). And then Obi Wan never actually intends to fight Vader in earnest. He intends to become a force ghost all along. Still one step ahead of Anakin's understanding of the force.
czottmann · 1d ago
Here's a few instances of fan service in that movie:
- Andor running into Pigperson and Grover on Yedha
- That entirely random 20-sec scene with C-3PO and R2-D2
- "Red Leader, standing by" was archive footage from A New Hope (and arguably a tribute to the late actor)
toyg · 1d ago
Rogue One was the first standalone movie in the Star Wars universe. There was a lot of uncertainty about how it would be received. I don't blame them for ham-fistedly shoving in there some extra linkage to the main canon... and even with that, it made much less than the "regular" sequel trilogy.
apples_oranges · 1d ago
You guys are excluding the George Lucas movies from discussion right?
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 …
fettel · 1d ago
I'm a lifelong Star Wars fan, fell in love as a young kid. I remember being in 8th grade and being so excited for the prequels, and then walking out of the theater after Ep. 1 and feeling like something was just... wrong. I knew that it was junk, and not the Star Wars I fell in love with.
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.
MangoToupe · 1d ago
I actually greatly prefer the prequels to the original trilogy. I suspect it has to do with the fact that I was a child when episode 1 came out and I was still a child when the prequels concluded.
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.
ghaff · 1d ago
I think it's probably even truer of TV series than films that you can't really go home again. But then I'm probably forgetting various Disney and other films that I probably loved as a kid that I'd find it torture to sit through today.
rockemsockem · 1d ago
IDK, I feel like good kids movies tend to stay good into adulthood. Presumably you wouldn't feel like it's torture to sit through something like the Lion King (the original of course) as an adult? Like I'm not saying they're amazing movies, but I feel like good kids movies aren't painful for adults to watch. You can still have good writing, it just has to be something a kid can follow.
ghaff · 1d ago
Sophisticated animation can play at multiple levels. Certainly a lot of Disney and Pixar (OK now Disney). Warner Brothers cartoons.
MangoToupe · 1d ago
Some stuff this is true with, but other stuff can age better. I loved MASH as a kid (huge props to the writers for pulling that off), but it's side-splitting as an adult.
ghaff · 1d ago
Certainly one of the great series. I think a lot of 60s sitcoms probably age less well.
jimbokun · 19h ago
Just FYI, MASH was 70s into early 80s, not 60s.
ghaff · 11h ago
Very aware of that. And probably 70s hold up better than 60s but with a little bit of research could probably come up with cringeworthy 70s and 80s examples to (of which MASH is certainly not one).
emblo · 1d ago
I agree with most of what you're saying—that much of it is driven by nostalgia, and it's not worth getting super worked up about these things, and it's fine for people to like whatever they like—but if you do want to get into a discussion about art and the relative merits of these shows, there are good arguments that the originals executed on things like character and plot that the prequels just didn't. Red Letter Media did the best review series on why exactly the prequels felt so unsatisfying to so many people, and it's more than just preference and has to do with blunders in fundamental aspects of storytelling. All of that said it's totally fine for people to like them, and you're right that there are better things to fret over.
Karrot_Kream · 1d ago
I enjoyed the Red Letter Media series but felt it was unfair on the Prequels (which is fine, RLM is still a great series.) I ended up watching the OT a bit after Episode 2 and found them to be just as campy and flaw filled as the Prequels just in different places. But this has been litigated to death on the net since Usenet days so I'm not sure if we're gonna break new ground here (:
MangoToupe · 1d ago
Oh yea, critiquing movies is fun as hell, and with a franchise like star wars there's basically endless opportunity for it. I basically think Phantom Menace gets way too much critique, Clone Wars/A New Hope/Return of the Jedi don't get enough. Empire Strikes Back is really good, and whatever the third movie is was just kind of bland and depressing(it has some of the best action sequences of the series, but Padmé should have featured more strongly before dying offscreen.)
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.
iamacyborg · 1d ago
> 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.
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.
jefurii · 4h ago
I had the same reaction to you seeing Ep. 1 for the first time, but I've come to respect the prequels. Not for their acting certainly, but for the way Lucas' scifi retelling of Roman history is so relevant to our current moment. Clone Wars and Rebels both start out pretty childish I think by the end they're nearly as gritty and serious as Andor.
Update: Clone Wars especially benefits from finding a good best-of episode guide to help move the story along.
lawgimenez · 1d ago
As someone who’s starting reading non-jedi Star Wars books, I realized that Jedis are just a splash in the ocean.
There’s Thrawn universe, Battlefront, Rebel era, X-wings, Bad Batch, too many to mention.
mopenstein · 1d ago
This can't be true. I'm reading all these positive accolades for Andor in this thread and there's no way I'm watching it.
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.
dbalatero · 1d ago
Lol ok calm down. I agree with your quality assessment broadly, but I just finished Andor and it's excellent.
lucideer · 1d ago
> Should I really try Andor after all the bad stuff Disney made?
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.
isleyaardvark · 1d ago
It's the first "prestige" Star Wars TV show.
boppo1 · 1d ago
It's barely star wars. It's a competent spy thriller with star wars paint.
Turns out that makes for pretty good adult oriented star wars.
Joeboy · 1d ago
Tony Gilroy's mentioned a lot of influences on Andor, few if any of which had anything to do with Star Wars. Off the top of my head:
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).
jimbokun · 19h ago
In a strange way, that makes it a better fit as a prequel for the original trilogy.
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.
hackyhacky · 1d ago
Star Wars is barely Star Wars: it's just Flash Gordon and Dam Busters with Star Wars paint.
You can't escape your influences, and you don't need to.
Larrikin · 1d ago
Word of warning, because there is just so much praise online about it, it is a very slow burn. I gave up on first season half way through. I picked it up again after first season was fully out because of all the good reviews and was happy that I finished.
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
guilamu · 1d ago
"You guys are excluding the George Lucas movies from discussion right?"
We are not. Andor is the best Star Wars ever made, full stop. IMHO, it surpasses, by far, anything Lucas ever did.
layer8 · 1d ago
It’s a different beast. For me, there’s too many things in Andor that don’t fit conceptually, logically or tonally with the original trilogy. So if you like the world building the OT did and/or hinted at, Andor might not come through on that. Of course, the prequel trilogy (again quite a different beast) had similar issues.
babyshake · 1d ago
The prequels are trying to do what Andor does well, including a more political focus. But Andor just blows it out of the Naboo water.
jimbokun · 19h ago
For me it fits perfectly well if you're coming at it from the perspective of people in the same universe who've never seen a Jedi or the Emperor in their lives.
emptysongglass · 1d ago
Yes, it's easy to view Lucas' films with a rose-tinted lens, but try and watch them now and you see: poor acting, poor writing, one-dimensional characters and plot points.
ahartmetz · 1d ago
And by far the coolest looking spaceships ever seen in any medium. The production design was incredible.
At least X-Wings, TIE Fighters, Corellian Corvettes, Imperial Shuttles and Star Destroyers. Not a fan of the Millennium Falcon tbh.
wslh · 1d ago
The TIE Avenger starship [1] in the series seems incredible. I cannot find the official toy.
The acting is perfect for the campy story Lucas was trying to tell.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 1d ago
I didn't think we loved it for the acting, but the production and world building which Lucas excels at IMO.
mitthrowaway2 · 16h ago
And the John Williams soundtrack.
drunkonvinyl · 1d ago
To your second question, yes. Andor would be exactly the wrong one to bail on if you’ve made it through those others.
lupire · 1d ago
Andor bailed on a Bail, ended up having Bail on twice.
baq · 1d ago
The only Star Wars worth watching as an adult is Andor.
ghaff · 1d ago
Andor is good and you can almost ignore that it's Star Wars universe.
sylens · 1d ago
Andor is the best Star Wars that Disney has made
AngryData · 1d ago
I didn't really think Rogue One was anything special and thought sequel movies were trash, but I still watched every Andor episode as it came out, it is really good.
dbalatero · 1d ago
I thought Mandalorian was trash, every episode a video game fetch quest. In general I hate modern Star Wars. Andor is in a different category and totally worth it.
divbzero · 18h ago
If you thought Rogue One was cool, then yes you should definitely try Andor.
rendall · 1d ago
I felt like The Mandalorian was a step above its nearest best of Star Wars TV. Andor is a step above that.
BLKNSLVR · 1d ago
I'm on both sides of the fence with early Mandalorian. I need to watch it again until it jumps the shark because I don't know how early it did that.
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".
iainmerrick · 1d ago
I watched two or three episodes of The Mandalorian and was very underwhelmed. Childishly simplistic plot, but much too violent to be a kid’s show. (Although now I say that, I guess the original movies are both childish and violent.)
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.
ahartmetz · 6h ago
As far as I'm concerned, The Mandalorian started out silly (Manadalorian honor code / the fucking helmet!), disjointed and boring, then there was that garbage episode where he randomly defends a village from Bad Guys, then I gave up on it.
colordrops · 1d ago
Mandalorian started out strong and got progressively worse with each episode. Don't even bother with season 3.
fernandopj · 1d ago
Agreed. First couple of episodes are so good, when I was watching it really felt like the magic from watching EpIV again, as everything felt like being introduced to a new culture far away.
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.
storus · 23h ago
I had that feeling with Andor - Season 1 was great, Season 2 was... not sure how to even name it, it was like a completely different show.
troupo · 1d ago
> Should I really try Andor after all the bad stuff Disney made?
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
Reefersleep · 13h ago
I prefer good static heads vs poor walking and talking. Didn't notice the prior to be a problem in Andor.
AuryGlenz · 21h ago
I would honestly rate Andor up there with A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. It’s the top tier, for sure.
Spooky23 · 1d ago
I think for older fans we don’t get it. My son is 15 and grew up with the animated series, for him that’s peak Star Wars and I think he’s right. His buddies really loved Rogue One. The magic is its simplicity.
I think like the Asimov books, Star Wars is best as fantasy history. The forward looking ones (that horrific “final” trilogy) are just awkward stories.
ghaff · 1d ago
While you can't dismiss New Hope as it was just breathtaking at the time of its release, Empire Strikes Back was arguably peak, and you needed to wrap it up with the third movie, there's a good argument that Rogue One was the second best film after Empire. And probably Andor as a series after that. Unlike a lot of people I don't mind series wrapping up after a season or two. Even in the best cases I'm starting to lose interest by season five in a lot of cases.
(I think the prequels were worse than the sequels but they're collectively pretty unmemorable.)
Spooky23 · 1d ago
I agree with you 100%. I found it interesting that in this particular circle of kids, they rate the attack of the clones much higher, as the animated series is kind of a “Star Wars home” to them.
Any way you cut it, it’s really cool how people consume them in different ways, and there’s enough material that over time we can just discard garbage like 8 hours of walking through the desert.
ghaff · 1d ago
Attack of the Clones is IMO not bad. Had Phantom Menace (and Jar Jar) not poisoned the well so to speak, I'm not sure the prequel trilogy would be as vilified as it is. Have never watched the animated series.
fernandopj · 1d ago
Personally, I rate the midichlorians much higher as poison than Jar Jar, who could be safely ignored in subsequent movies anyway.
troupo · 1d ago
Everyone gushing over Rogue One... but it was at best barely competent.
10-20 minutes of static talking heads, 5 minutes of mediocre action. Repeat until the end. Meaningless side-quests. The final is a thousand cliches one after another culminating in a "main computer at the end of a rickety walkway" and "a kiss at the sunset".
The only reason it's hailed as the greatest movie ever is because so much of the Star Wars is just objectively shit.
hackyhacky · 1d ago
> a kiss at the sunset
They don't kiss.
And that's not a sunset.
troupo · 1d ago
You know exactly what I mean. It couldn't have been more predictable, cheezy and cliched if it was and actual kiss at the sunset
hackyhacky · 1d ago
I know what you mean and I completely disagree. It's a subversion a standard trope. Moreover, the fraternal relationship between the two leads is a reference to Andor's arc in Andor. It's an ending about sacrifice that wouldn't make sense in any other context.
troupo · 1d ago
> It's a subversion a standard trope.
There's nothing subversive.
> It's an ending about sacrifice that wouldn't make sense in any other context.
There are a million ways to make an ending about sacrifice. Rogue One chose the worst one, after a lot of other ridiculous choices
nprateem · 13h ago
[Spoiler-ish] It's just a shame the show largely fails to build emotional connection with the characters. When bad things happened I mostly felt nothing.
The other thing that has always plagued SW is the fact they can travel through hyperspace, have the tech to destroy planets, but largely lack CCTV, autopilot, effective homing missiles, HD displays, etc. It's a weird mix of 70s tech and super sci-fi.
It's like, if you were leading a rebellion, would you have your secret base rigged with remotely detonated explosives, or need to go back and cackhandedly manually destroy your comms, etc?
Suspension of disbelief is stretched to breaking point sometimes.
iainmerrick · 1d ago
To address this interview specifically, rather than just gushing about how great Andor is--
One point Nuyens makes in a few different ways is that they used a variety of tools and techniques at every stage. People often have simplistic, extreme viewpoints like "modern CGI can do anything" or "CGI looks fake and weightless, practical effects are better". But here's somebody with a big part in making a fantastic-looking show, who very explicitly embraces multiple approaches. Massive real sets with CGI enhancements; sometimes green screens, sometimes old-fashioned backdrop paintings, sometimes LED screens. It sounds like close collaboration between teams in different areas was key, like the VFX team working with the production designer from the start. "Some shots started VFX and then became sets."
It sounds like a big success for an artisanal approach, where every element is a bespoke construction by cross-functional experts, versus a modular approach where each team has a position in the workflow with well-defined inputs and outputs.
But maybe it's not worth the time and money, and the "worse is better" approach wins out? I hope not, or least I hope we get more shows aspiring to be as good as this.
On a smaller scale, interesting to hear how much equipment on a high-end film set is now wireless. That must be a massive change from just a few years ago, where you'd have had massive cables snaking everywhere.
jfengel · 1d ago
The sets are jaw dropping. An awful lot of them seem to be practical, and that must be very expensive.
They didn't have to. It's cinema quality. They could have spent less and gotten a goodly fraction of the quality. But I'm really glad they did.
jimbokun · 19h ago
Watching it I felt like watching something that had been filmed on location, even though I knew that was impossible.
Like they actually took the actors to Coruscant to shoot scenes. Felt so much more lived in than Coruscant in the prequels.
iainmerrick · 10h ago
One of the big Senate buildings is apparently the Prince Felipe Science Museum in Valencia. The real thing looks incredible.
"Lived in" is absolutely right. That's something people always praised about the original movies, but that was about the smokey dive bars, messy aircraft hangars and broken-down machinery. Getting that lived-in feel for massive Imperial buildings and cities is a great new twist on it.
lucideer · 1d ago
One of the things I've heard about the practical sets in multiple interviews is how they made an intentional effort to put a lot of real, functional, working props throughout the sets explicitly so that extras & folk appearing in scene backgrounds would have something to engage with & feel more immersed in their smaller roles. Most of these props would never be in frame - many were inside of cabinets or containers.
manmal · 1d ago
I have zero knowledge about lenses and optics in general, but found it interesting that the outer edges of the frame are often blurred in a peculiar way. Was that a stylistic choice?
NelsonMinar · 1d ago
It's the anamorphic lenses. It's become something of a look recently so I think of it partly as a deliberate stylistic choice. But also an accident of a particular lens geometry. They just don't mind it.
Any odd blurring, distortion, or vignetting you might find around the edges could be caused by anamorphic lenses. Vignetting is often also added in post.
RataNova · 16h ago
Andor felt like a show where every detail was sweated over by people who cared
andrepd · 1d ago
> Massive real sets with CGI enhancements; sometimes green screens
This is the definition of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and they're still some of the best-looking films I've ever seen, far surpassing the modern UE slop.
DavidPiper · 1d ago
The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is well-known for being peak CGI Artist overtime and burnout. Don't have the source handy right now, but At World's End in particular was allegedly an absolute meat grinder for the CG folks for years.
That said, I do agree, they made something truly incredible that has stood the test of time. And I wish we could have more of it (but I'll also take better working conditions every day until we figure out how to have both.)
andrepd · 9h ago
Oh yeah yeah, I'm a massive fan of the trilogy so I've gone through all the BTS and staff interviews and whatnot. The consensus among the vfx artists is that yeah, while Davy Jones looks great due to its mix of procedural + handmade animation, it's also completely impractical to do; it was hundreds and hundreds of hours for each few seconds of Davy Jones' tentacles to be perfect.
monocularvision · 1d ago
We watched the original trilogy a couple months back with our kids and we were all so impressed by how they looked. And it wasn’t an “impressive for their age” but legitimately looked better than modern day films.
chrisweekly · 1d ago
UE?
Filligree · 1d ago
Unreal Engine is used quite a lot in animation.
Darthbuddha · 1d ago
Unreal Engine
captainbland · 1d ago
The main thing that impressed me about Andor is how they managed to make the Stormtroopers seem like a genuinely intimidating force rather than just a rabble of goons in costumes. It goes to show how much they elevated the believability of Star Wars in Andor.
twodave · 1d ago
I agree. Especially in the originals, everything just sort of “works out” for the protagonist(s). The bad guys don’t aim well, fly well or really do anything great. And that’s fine because that is era of cinema Star Wars came from. In Andor the empire is smart, calculated, deadly and just plain scary—nearly to a visceral degree, if you allow yourself to be absorbed into the story.
And despite how good Andor (and Rogue One fits here as well) was, I think there’s some merit to wanting to go see a film that makes you feel good. There are certain films and books I won’t put myself through (especially fiction) more than once because I don’t want something ultimately meaningless adding stress to my life. It’s supposed to be an enjoyable escape. So Andor/Rogue One come pretty close to that point for me.
CGMthrowaway · 21h ago
> Especially in the originals, everything just sort of “works out” for the protagonist(s). The bad guys don’t aim well, fly well or really do anything great.
In a New Hope as Luke and Ben are inspecting the damage to the Jawa transport, Ben does say "Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise." Then the stormtroopers go on the rest of the series missing everything they aim at.
jimbokun · 19h ago
One aspect I didn't realize though watching it as a kid is they only escape the Death Star because Vader WANTS them to escape. So he can follow them back to the Secret Rebel Base.
fknorangesite · 6h ago
It's not exactly subtle. Leia says it outright:
> Leia: They let us go. It was the only reason for the ease of our escape.
> Han: Easy? You call that easy?
> Leia: They're tracking us.
manmal · 1d ago
The security droids were also quite something. I found them super scary, with their eyes that seemed to understand, in a calculating way. And with a posture like giant primates, and the ability to easily tear people apart. Definitely not the watered down versions of „battle droids“ we‘ve seen so far, who were easily tricked and fell apart when you kicked them.
RataNova · 16h ago
Yep, they finally felt like an actual occupying military force rather than just target practice for the heroes
hammock · 1d ago
Plus the Deathtroopers, the navy seals of storm troopers
nicoburns · 1d ago
If you haven't watched Andor and you are at all open to sci-fi then I would urge you to consider giving a go. The writing, acting, and cinematography are all excellent, and IMO it is a very strong contender for the best TV show released in the last few years.
meowface · 1d ago
It makes me wish it were the actual start of the franchise and then they made Rogue One and the trilogy de novo. In that counterfactual I think there's a good shot it'd be far better than the originals, and the Star Wars story would be considered not just a classic but a masterpiece. (I don't think the original trilogy is bad exactly, but the trilogy with the Andor look/feel/style/writing/acting could've been some of the best films ever.)
iainmerrick · 1d ago
I don’t know, I still really value the original trilogy. It’s just very, very different in some crucial ways.
One aspect that’s really striking when you see Andor is how little the Jedi and the Force have to do with it; which highlights how central they are to the original trilogy. (Rogue One does a pretty deft job of bridging those worlds, eg with Donnie Yen’s character.)
And the Force was a big part of the charm of the original movies, right? All the scenes with Luke and Yoda are wonderful, for example. I wouldn’t want to take that away, any more than I’d want to shoehorn the Jedi into Andor.
I think the real problem with the original movies starts with the prequels, which doubled down on all the Jedi business but managed to make it feel very pedestrian, rather than mystical.
The sequel movies could have been great if they had really tried to explore the collapse of the Empire and what the reconstruction would look like, rather than shamelessly retreading everything beat-for-beat. The Last Jedi did at least try to be different, but its ideas were completely scattershot and (I think) not very fruitful.
JKCalhoun · 1d ago
"The Force" never sat well with me. It was the one weird supernatural thing in the Star Wars universe that pushed the whole franchise into "magic" territory.
The less Force, the better in my opinion. Save super-powers for comic-book movies.
meowface · 1d ago
A bit of it is interesting. When they're just flinging objects/debris/rocks at each other for 10 minutes it's pretty silly, but the force-choking scenes are some of the most iconic Star Wars moments. Adds something to the world.
No comments yet
WD-42 · 1d ago
I thought it worked in the original trilogy because it was much more subtle, but still powerful. You watch Luke struggle to harness it over the span of 3 movies.
In the recent Disney movies (Andor being the exception) it’s like they gave everyone the force, everyone is a super hero, it’s bombastic and annoying.
atoav · 1d ago
This is btw. what I hate with so many modern RPGs, you are a nobody but within 5 minutes of playing you are already extremely awesome and look like a shiny knight on a white horse.
Let me run around with a rock and a stick for the first hour. Then give me a sword that looks cheap but I will cherish it. Then take it away. Let me earn it when I am awesome in the end.
To many games treat you like a toddler that wants shiny things. Yeah I want shiny things, but I want them when I deserved them. Similarily, yeah, I want powerful heros, but they have to earn it as well.
cropcirclbureau · 14h ago
Check out FromSoft games. EldenRing drops loot and equipment so rarely it drove me up a well.
mrunkel · 19h ago
Check out the Kingdom Come Deliverance series.
Sure, you'll be a badass at the end, but you're going to earn it. :)
gmueckl · 1d ago
Star Wars was never science fiction. It has always been treated as fantasy with space ships by its creators. The nature of its setting is really much closer to Harry Potter than e.g. the Expanse.
fknorangesite · 6h ago
Surely by now we must be tired of this kind of pointless hair-splitting.
krapp · 23h ago
I don't know, plenty of "science fiction" has telepaths and psionics, especially from the 1970s and 80s. Star Trek had it since the original series.
If your standard for what science fiction is us The Expanse then almost all of what's considered science fiction is fantasy.
gmueckl · 14h ago
Even the Expanse has fantastical elements like the protomolecule and the Epstein drive. The difference is that it is closer to classic science fiction authors like Asimov, Clarke or Niven in that this body of work tries hard to keep some grounding in extrapolated scientific models.
Star Wars doesn't even claim to attempt this. It is a world of entirely made up rules and places for the sake of the story. There is nothing wrong with that. But it completely misses this key feature of sci fi.
There isn't a very clear delineation between the two genres. Star Trek also crosses this line into pure fantasy pretty consistently (an anomaly that compells everybody to sing and eventually produces a Klingon boy band performance? Or one that gives everybody amnesia and turns them into actors in Shakespeare drama - costumes and all?).
krapp · 11h ago
Most science fiction is closer to Star Wars than The Expanse, and Star Wars is more grounded in plausible reality than Star Trek, which no one tags as "science fantasy." If Andor didn't have "Star Wars" branding, I don't think anyone would have a problem considering it science fiction in the grand tradition of a lot of MilSF.
I'm not saying the distinction doesn't exist - The Hobbit isn't SF and Ringworld isn't high fantasy, but I am saying that between the extremes, it's mostly just vibes. There is no objective reason not to consider Star Wars science fiction, some people just find the space wizards too silly (while having a bookshelf full of "The author's barely disguised fetish or hyperfixation but In Spaaaaace.")
atoav · 1d ago
The force was okay for me when it was treated seriously and not as a plot vehicle that could suddenly do things that are not plausible within the rules of the universe so far.
jajko · 1d ago
Its like being raised from earliest age with some religion (any, really, they are all equal in good and bad ways) vs somebody who wasn't. The thickness of rose-tinted glasses is something that's hard to argue about rationally.
I wasn't in both cases, communists considered it a capitalist propaganda about US might and banned it (maybe just heard about Star wars being US space program, took just first result on soviet gugel so to speak, but fight for freedom at all costs is generally not something you want to encourage in dictatorship).
They are an interesting flick (original trilogy), but nothing really magical for me in them. As mentioned by others they feel like 80s pop sci fi movie, nothing more, characters and acting are... mediocre and it all feels aimed at kids/teens. A lot of creativity with sets, but that's not primary reason for me to watch a movie.
Since I refuse (can't even) to be swayed emotionally of some good ol' memories from growing up, prequels felt even more childish (maybe apart from ep3), and this trend continued with last 3 movies. Rogue one was by far the best experience in whole SW universe, so if this goes even further happy to experience it.
jaybrendansmith · 1d ago
It's again amazing A New Hope was as good as it was, given the budget, inexperience, and writing. But the ideas were brilliant, and Lucas' vision was unparalleled. And Andor is great because it had the budget and the writing to actually live up to that original vision. Empire is so good precisely because Lucas had the money to live up to it and really fill out the world. And the vision just exploded from there with the Expanded Universe. It's now a science fiction franchise that is much larger than the original Foundation novels it was based upon, and much larger than pretty much anything excepting Star Trek and maybe Marvel, at least in TV and film. There are quite literally hundreds of stories they could tell if the fans are still there.
manmal · 1d ago
If they can reboot Harry Potter as a series, I guess Star Wars should be an option, too. Disney will run out of storylines/timelines that are compatible with nostalgia, soon.
lupire · 1d ago
As a matter of language, "classic" is far higher status than "masterpiece".
peeters · 1d ago
> you are at all open to sci-fi
That is to say, a sci-fi setting. Andor would not be correctly put in the sci-fi genre, rather in the political thriller genre.
aidenn0 · 19h ago
Sci-fi (and fantasy) are settings, not genres.
atq2119 · 1d ago
That's the thing about sci-fi: almost all good sci-fi stories are really sci-fi + X, where X is some other genre. Often adventure or mystery, sometimes horror, and in this case political thriller / spy story.
lolinder · 1d ago
I'm trying to figure out what sci-fi not crossed with something else even means. Even most of the great works of classic sci-fi of the 20th century draw tropes and plot points from other genres.
ragazzina · 1d ago
Isn't that true for every genre?
fsloth · 1d ago
I'm not sure why some plots would be off-limits in sci-fi genre? Isn't setting limits antithesis to the whole idea of sci-fi?
peeters · 22h ago
I guess like with all categorization, genres are reductive generalizations. And I'm saying the sci-fi generalization is much less descriptive of Andor than the political thriller generalization is. You could transplant Andor to WWII historical fiction and it would be less of a change than changing the mood and story to fit what most people's preconceived notions of sci-fi is.
I guess in short, I'm saying that you really don't have to be open to the sci fi genre to enjoy Andor.
fsloth · 17h ago
Interesting, I would not consider mood and story descriptive of sci-fi at all. Rather sci-fi adds speculative and fantastic elements to a world still populated by humans / beings of relatable psychology.
And once you have relatable psychology you also get politics and weaponization of information (what the show was mostly about) - political thriller. Agree, those elements were damn good ones. And I loved the utilization of WW 2 analogues - French resistance, Spanish civil war, Wansee conference etc etc
I would say the show was very _grounded_ in that the high stakes were about humans doing human things.
What sets Andor apart is _excellence_ and (partly budget driven) restraint.
Not only was the acting superb, the script was intelligent.
But then the attention to visual detail was next level as well. The sets and costumes were mind blowingly good. For example I was convinced they had to had found some real life location for the Ghorman plaza (nope, built set + CGI). I would love to have a plaza like that. Not many shows have so good fictional architecture you would love to see the real thing.
So I was totally impressed with the show. But in my books it’s still sci-fi. It’s probably the best recent serialized sci-fi show in the last decade along with the Expanse.
If I’m reading between the lines what you are saying is that ”Andor is actually intelligent and high quality art … sci-fi can’t be high quality art”? I’m exaggerating to make a point.
peeters · 2h ago
> If I’m reading between the lines what you are saying is that ”Andor is actually intelligent and high quality art … sci-fi can’t be high quality art”? I’m exaggerating to make a point.
Nope not at all, for example I personally would put the Expanse firmly in the genre of sci-fi. The major themes it explores centre around its setting; it doesn't happen to exist in a futuristic space setting; the entire show would cease to function as a concept without it. Major plot lines exist specifically to explore the "what-ifs" of that fictional future. And honestly, while I acknowledge it's intelligent and extremely well loved by its fans, it's one that I'd have trouble recommending to people that aren't big into sci fi, for that reason.
But compare that to something like Firefly, where's it's basically a heist/western that happens to be set in outer space.
whatnow37373 · 1d ago
It’s not sci-fi though. If Star Wars is sci-fi then Jurassic Park is a biology documentary.
whilenot-dev · 1d ago
...or Westworld (1973) a western
mmplxx · 1d ago
Also the music, it has an impressive original soundtrack, I love how they play with opening variations.
hei-lima · 21h ago
Strongly agree!
poisonborz · 1d ago
Andor is a huge middle finger for everything that came after the original trilogy. It manages to be menacing and showing a convincing rebellion against realistic fascism - relying heavily on the tones of the old films - without any of the dumb Jedi magic, light sabers andd mystic blabble.
mystifyingpoi · 1d ago
What's wrong with light sabers? It's just a weapon with some useful properties (like bouncing back blaster shots). Finn used it fine for a sec, so it's proven that the user doesn't need to be trained at all in anything really.
The Force though... yeah, as much as I'm a big fan of SW, the whole concept leans way too hard into soft magic territory, at least to my taste.
CGMthrowaway · 21h ago
> Finn used it fine for a sec, so it's proven that the user doesn't need to be trained at all in anything really.
Even in ESB, Han Solo uses it to cut open the ton ton
poisonborz · 1d ago
For one the technology for such a saber far surpasses and stands out from anything else in the Empire. But more importantly it requires the same superhuman Jedi magic to be useful (swinging to bounce blaster shots). It works as a ritual weapon / in climatic battles, but modern SW overuses it (as the Jedis in general).
mystifyingpoi · 11h ago
> But more importantly it requires the same superhuman Jedi magic to be useful
No, Finn used it fine in defense when fighting a trooper in TFA. It is useful even without the Force. We can only blame sequels for that :P
Although yeah, when compared to other weapons at the time, they seem overpowered, I agree, never thought of that.
aeve890 · 1d ago
> without any of the dumb Jedi magic, light sabers andd mystic blabble
They have some of it too. But it's a very well crafted scene showing how normal people would react to the force weirdos.
chiph · 1d ago
What has impressed me is that in all the Imperial scenes - they have a lot of polished surfaces (floor, control panels, etc) and you never see a reflection of crew or film equipment. I'm sure most of this is the result of good planning before filming but also the amount of effort put in post-production to remove any it.
As a physical media guy, I'm happy that Disney decided to release season 1 on 4k UHD. And I hope to buy season 2 when it hits the shelves.
iainmerrick · 1d ago
That reminds of Arthur C Clarke writing about the process of making 2001 with Stanley Kubrick. Clarke visited the set one day, and was absolutely blown away, but jokingly pointed out that somebody had left some fingerprints on the Monolith. Kubrick was furious and Clarke was seriously worried he was going to fire somebody on the spot.
(I think that's in Lost Worlds of 2001, which is a fun read)
isleyaardvark · 1d ago
I love how there are a lot of reflections in windows, makes it look more real.
morkalork · 1d ago
All the interior sets of imperial ships, especially the crashed one in S1 were absolutely gorgeous. The shiny black glass surfaces, analogue controls, blinking lights and fixtures everywhere were just wow. I can't remember the last time I saw such a well done rendition of "sleek retro-futuristic" aesthetic.
chiph · 14h ago
Part of the design esthetic is that nothing is labeled. How do people know that the 2nd switch from the right opens communications? I think that in the Empire you have to be a fast learner.
Or else.
parsimo2010 · 1d ago
Andor is shot beautifully but it has a major issue that has plagued an increasing amount of shows recently. It is way too dark. The creators knew it was going straight to streaming and was never shown in theaters. I can’t watch the show in the daytime because even with my blinds down and curtains drawn the window in my living room washes out half of the scenes. Some very important things happened in the dark (it being a spy/espionage show), and I felt like I was blind. The script was not written to be an audio drama, it relies on visuals that I literally couldn’t see half the time.
Directors shooting something for streaming: please watch your show on a laptop or cheaper TV in a realistic bedroom or living room setting (with daylight leaking in or with some lights turned on). We don’t all have reference grade monitors and a pitch black studio. In fact, most consumers don’t have those things. If you really want to keep the cinematic purity, could you at least make a “normie edit” that pumps up the brightness?
hammock · 1d ago
I finished season 2 yesterday and was actually thinking how refreshing it was that andor WASNT too dark. It has some dark scenes sure but I really it’s not nearly as bad as most shows these days
vachina · 1d ago
Turn on dynamic tone mapping on your tv, or reduce contrast your TV settings.
I’d rather they preserve the dynamic range than succumb to the loudness war.
piyuv · 1d ago
Agreed. Real PITA with OLED tv’s. Musicians listen to their tracks in car stereos, directors should do what you suggest
djaychela · 9h ago
Not seen any of these issues on my oled and have watched in full daylight.
fsloth · 1d ago
I think it depends. For me on a fairly recent OLED, watching from the Disney app in AppleTV it looked pretty spectacular during day and night. I do know _some_ shows are terrible but Andor was totally legible to me. I'm not saying you did not have this problem, just that it's not as bad as in some other shows and personally I could not notice it.
kenhwang · 1d ago
I had the opposite opinion of Andor's cinematography. On a nice OLED, everything looked so gray and flat because most scenes were devoid of true dark blacks or bright whites or vivid colors; like every detail on every scene had to be softly uniformly lit so it could be seen. All the beautiful shot composition was defeated by the color grading and lighting that just screamed that it was targeted towards lower common denominator streaming quality screens and not theaters.
Whole time I thought there was really no point watching on an OLED or in HDR cause it's not taking advantage of either.
You can even see it on the photos in the article. The BTS photographs have contrast and blacks while the stills from the show are muted and gray.
The whole series basically looked like it was trying to recreate the "Shot on Google Pixel" look and completely opposite of HBO's black on black on black.
ruined · 1d ago
you might have misconfigured HDR in your viewing setup, even if you don't have an HDR display.
a lot of video players don't get it right consistently codec-to-codec, even the gold standard FOSS classics (VLC, MPV) and wrappers like iina on mac.
i typically use iina and vlc as fallback, but wasn't able to get either to play correctly, even though they're fine players for some other examples. i wound up subbing to disney plus for a month to watch it properly.
if you're viewing MKVs of unknown provenance, use an HDR version to ensure it's not a bad encode. if you're not viewing on an HDR display, double-check that tone mapping is enabled and configured correctly.
jfengel · 1d ago
Netflix has a brightness setting that you can easily get to while watching. I really wish the Disney app had one.
Kon5ole · 1d ago
Andor + Rogue one are my favourites from the franchise. It tells a story that the 50 year olds that grew up with SW can appreciate for its depth and intrigue as well as connection to the original films, but leaving the hallowed originals mostly alone.
I wish the crew behind it would be allowed to continue the story until the fall of the emperor, so we could get the whole "rise and fall of the empire" story told with the same quality, depth and overall "tone" for lack of a better word.
Three more seasons taking place during the same time as the original trilogy would be nice, but of course keeping the Skywalker and Jedi stuff mostly in the background.
A similar show as Andor with storylines taking place on Alderaan and the construction site of the death star, say.
sdenton4 · 1d ago
Hmmm, rise of the empire you say? So a long hard look at a faltering parliamentary system, gradually usurped by an authoritarian and his team of goons...
Doesn't sound very relatable for today's audiences.
hammock · 1d ago
It doesn’t? Imagine the Senate as the UN/NATO and the emperor as George Soros. Palpatine even looks like him
jajko · 1d ago
Must this old russian propaganda permeat also thread about... Star Wars?
kriro · 1d ago
I think Andor is a bit over hyped in this threat. I absolutely love it (especially the Imperial side of things) but saying it is better than the original movies is a bit too much. If you take into account the time and technical possibilities it's not even close. And the original movies have more memorable things overall. I mean the two villains alone are all time greats. The music is also better (imo).
But most importantly, I think Andor is less strong without the original movies. The looming threat and the Mothma high-society scenes become a lot less powerful. Same for the insights into the Imperial machine. And even the meaning of the Rebellion itself. I'd argue while technically great, well written etc. without the SW backdrop the storytelling suffers quite a bit.
Joeboy · 1d ago
Andor is a very good TV show, but it's obviously getting extra appreciation because it's part of a beloved but increasingly exhausted franchise.
belval · 1d ago
It's the opposite for me. I could not be more burnt out on StarWars, when they introduced the force in season 2 I rolled my eyes and it somewhat took me out of it. The main downside of watching Andor is that you have your brain nagging you about eposide 7 making everything that you are watching pointless (the new republic is obliterated after 20-30 years).
I have friends that I can't convince to watch it because they are just too done with that universe in general.
But that's the thing, Andor could be outside of StarWars and just its own thing because the world building that it does on its own is excellent, the premise (empire vs rebellion/revolutionaries) is mostly intemporal.
CGMthrowaway · 21h ago
7-9 should basically be taken out of canon. They aren't truly original stories or extension of the existing one - they are just a retelling of 4-6 for a modern audience
kriro · 1d ago
And this is exactly where I disagree. Andor does not stand very well on its own outside of SW (and that takes it from great tier to very good for me with the other minor squibbles that I have). If you don't know the lore, things will be less clear and the writing will feel strange at times. FWIW, I have recommended this show to many friends who never watched anything SW, they mostly liked it but found some things odd.
WARNING, SPOILERS
The story is not properly resolved. If you have no SW knowledge, the threat isn't even very clear. Some galaxy government lead by an emperor is building a weapon, shown once. If S2 is the end it's pretty unsatisfying in general. The politics are kind of unclear.
The sacrifice of Mothma is very unclear without a SW background. A senator said something and had to flee to a planet (oversimplified).
Without knowledge of R1, the killing machine super droid is down right comical/a sloppy resolve for things.
Without SW knowledge the (imo) best part of the Imperial machinery, bureaucracy, power hunger also becomes awkward at times and frankly less interesting. Syril is my favorite character and Dedra probably second. I found their arcs great, every single non-SW viewer I talked to found them "boring", "that guy with the annoying mother was strange" and "why did they have to be a couple, that's pretty unimaginative writing" etc.
END SPOILERS
My personal quibbles are that the crashed tie episode was pretty bad filler. I have not heard anyone say anything good about it.
Someone else already mentioned minor technical problems (field scene).
I found Diego Luna's acting ok but not great. It felt wooden at times. To some extend that's subjective but it doesn't compare to the lead acting I have in my personal top tier (Breaking Bad for example)
pcthrowaway · 1d ago
I watched Andor having not watched much other Star Wars, and with vague memories of A New Hope.
I absolutely loved it. So much that I'm now watching the entirety of Star Wars film and TV in chronological order (I'm in the Clone Wars series now, before the timeline overlaps Revenge of the Sith, and I went out of sequence to watch Rogue One to see the conclusion of the cast from Andor). The full chronology can be found here[1], though I used a bit of JS to extract just the films, tv shows, and video specials as a markdown table to put in Obsidian
So as someone who can say I pretty much didn't have the context you claim is necessary to appreciate Andor, I can tell you that it 100% stands out as a masterpiece to people who are unfamiliar with the rest of the Star Wars lore.
I get that it felt like a bit of a diversion from the main story, but thematically the show is largely about the less palatable realities of being part of a resistance movement. That episode is about the reality that you'll probably end up getting waylaid by squabbling idiots along the way. I think it earns its place in the show.
isleyaardvark · 1d ago
The crashed tie episode was part of the larger theme in the series to show the progression/evolution of the Rebellion over the years (and why there was the reveal that it took place on Yavin). That said I agree the execution could've been better.
lupire · 1d ago
Someone who appreciates Andor should find it easy to forget Ep7 entirely or understand that it was just a reboot remake alternate history, not "canon".
The Force part was hamfisted. It was clear that they were trying to avoid "midochlorians" but didn't know how it handle it, and didn't spend any time to develop it organically. It felt more like highbrow fanservice connecting Cassian to Luke. It's similar to the Kleya hospital/flashback episode, which could well have been its own 3 episode arc and gotten time to breathe like the S1 prison arc. Since they cut the project down to be 4 3-episode mini seasons after S1, instead of 6+ episodes each, they rushed some story arcs and sublots that end up just being presented as bullet points.
meowface · 1d ago
I think with nostalgia goggles and appreciation for what it was at the time, the originals are great, but in retrospect I don't think the original movies are that great. The story is very compelling and fun but across basically all other dimensions Andor is just higher-quality.
jccalhoun · 1d ago
I don't get what people love about Andor. The prison break episode was good but the flashbacks to the kids in the jungle were horrible and the funeral with instruments straight out of Fat Albert's junkyard band were laughable.
themgt · 1d ago
There's a lot to love, but e.g. the whole S2 arc where the Empire is provoking and covertly encouraging a rebellion on the planet they want to gut for resources - our protagonist gets a bad feeling about helping the amateur hour rebels but the amoral leader actually wants to encourage them knowing they'll likely fail.
"Think about a planet like Ghorman in rebellion. A planet of wealth and status."
"And if it goes up in flames?"
"It will burn... very brightly."
There's barely any recent popular TV or movies I can think of with the level of subtle, complex, morally grey themes Andor explored.
I found season 1 so underwhelming that I haven't gotten to season 2 yet.
greatgib · 1d ago
There were some good sequence and episodes, but mostly I agree with you. I found it slow and boring. The bottom plot is nice but but there a some episodes where almost nothing happens.
I'm quite sure that they were empty on ideas in terms of scenario, so they tried to spread the longest possible what would have fitted in a single movie of 2 hours.
I think that also explains why they didn't manage to do more than 2 seasons when their original goal was 5.
Arkhaine_kupo · 1d ago
Things to love about andor.
1) the themes it explores. Things like fighting fascism has been done to death by this point, half of YA is "goverment military and bad, young girl gets a love triangle and defats them". Andor shows the slowing, encroching effect of military rule. What a prision industrial complex looks like (from fake incarcerations to unescapable sentences). What colonialism looks like (bleak pragmatic bureocracy about mineral extraction while discussing genocide over hors d'oeuvres). How political silencing happens (mothma cannot find allies because they all understand they have very limited political capital and have to be very careful were they spend it). Those are serious topics, and you basically do not see them outside of shows which care on systems like Wire on the drug police system, or House of card with the political congress system. Certainly not on star wars
2) Cinematography. The show is shot like a spy thriller from the get go. It makes sense with Gilroy previous Bourne experience but for a disney property opening up with killing 2 cops outside a brothel sets a tone not seen previously. Thats carried with every arc having instantly recognisable look and feel, from the cold harsh lights of Narkina 5, to the warm beach vibes of Niamos (space miami), the future vibe of corusant or the jungle vibe of Yanvin 4.
3) Monologues. Most shows cant pull off one monologue without it looking awful, this show manages plenty of them, sometimes in the same episode.
4) The topics its willing to address. I mentioned themes before, but those themes can be explored in many ways. Prequels dealt with growing fascism in the republic then turned empire, but it wouldnt say genocide or have a isb officer talk about how annoying it is the army wants their interrogation techniques because their torture works so well. Or show insignificant middle managers so untouchable they attempt to rap* a main character. Saying the empire is very powerful and scary is one thing, showing how they behave with that power is way more chilling.
5) The carnival of interesting people explored. Most shows have a few main characters and then supporting characters whose mission is to not have a personality and be a plot device of some kind. Here outside of the incredible inner life of even minor characters you get to see the journey of peopel as varied as Andor, a colonial genocide survivor who was a petty thief and became a high ranking member of the rebellion. Luthen, an ex empire soldier who after crumbling on a mission rescues Kleya and becomes one of the leaders of the rebellion from within Corusant, sort of batman/bruce wayne. Vel, a nepo baby from Chandrilla who joins the rebellion. Syril, a dadless little shit who is obssesed with following the rules thinking he would get far inside the empire system. Dedra, an orphan that cares so much about results she might be actually responsible for the fall of the empire. Kleya, another genocide survivor, taken in by Luthen and basically nightwing to his batman. Like whether you like womanly women, or tomboy super killers and whether you like manly rebels who dont follow the rules to super organised overachiever you can find a character with an entire arc in andor for you.
I could keep going but honestly its just a great show. From ideas like making 3 episode arcs, to how well it ties into Rogue one I think there is so much to praise there
tecoholic · 1d ago
Everyone seem like to be discussing the show and none the article.
For someone who hadn’t watched the show, the article is a pain to read. The images are thrown in randomly, there is no relationship between the text and the images. Every images is pointlessly labelled “Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens”. The interview seems to have covered things in detail, like going into specific scenes and sets, and lens.. etc., but the accompanying images are utterly useless in showing any of that to the reader.
I gave up after a while.
acomjean · 1d ago
To be fair, the photos were just ones provided by Disney.
Most likely promotional shots. They used them as examples of the work, and as stills they hold up. I thought the article cromulent.
lucideer · 1d ago
I didn't find the images relevant to the article - they seemed to just be filler to avoid it seeming like a mundane wall of text - but I just ignored them & didn't find it hard to read as a result?
I can understand it might be difficult to understand the context of some set descriptions without having seen the show but I think that would also be true with relevant still images as you'd still lack character & narrative context.
Honestly can't see how they could've formatted the article any better than they did. Seems fine.
jfengel · 1d ago
I'm astonished at the sets. Some of them seem impossible even for The Volume.
I'm sure it's a combination of techniques (locations, Volume, CGI, green screen, etc), because that's what keeps your eye guessing. But I'm continually blown away by how expansive it is in both the foreground and background (and moving between the two).
lucideer · 1d ago
Afaik they didn't make any use of The Volume for this, but otherwise it's a nuanced combination of all 3 of CGI, locations & built practical sets.
beloch · 1d ago
The only thing I can say against Andor is that it made Rogue One seem a little bit inadequate as a capstone film.
ksynwa · 1d ago
Don't have much to add as a rube but Andor is the best TV I have ever watched. Not just in the Star Wars universe.
ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 · 1d ago
Just for calibration what’s your second favorite TV show of all time?
el_nahual · 1d ago
Not OP but Andor is definitely "up there" for me.
My two favorite shows ever are Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (w/ Alec Guinness), The Wire, The Simpsons seasons 1-8.
ksynwa · 1d ago
That would be It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Nathan For You but I don't appreciate them nearly as much as I do Andor.
t0bia_s · 1d ago
First session really impressed me. After all Disney Star Wars casual garbage shows, this one get my attention. Creators finally do not consider audience as dumb consumers.
Second season is great, but I still appreciate first more. S01E09 has one of the best space battles I ever saw in sci-fi. Ever.
worldsayshi · 1d ago
I especially like all the retro control panels! I wish I could find a montage of all the instrument, button and control panels of Andor.
Perfect! I probably had this one at the back of my head.
I suppose there's more good examples that could be mined from the show.
wishfish · 1d ago
For those people who loved Andor and its approach to the Empire and fascism, I have a book recommendation: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Chris Kempshall. It's written as history (not a novel) with the author being an in-universe scholar who originally focused on Jedi antiquities but decided to write a general history of the Empire.
Ties in well with Andor as the book discusses, realistically, how the rot set in with the Republic. How it could be transformed into the Empire with little initial protest. How the Empire sustained itself via a mix of military control, propaganda, and moving towards making the population feel helpless and thus apolitical. And how the blind sides of a rigid, fascist system led to the Rebellion winning despite the huge power disparity.
It's the perfect companion book for the series. And is a good introductory book on how authoritarianism takes hold, how the insurgents can exploit weaknesses, and what should be done, post-rebellion, to keep the fascists from returning. I think many people, who otherwise would not be obsessive about Star Wars lore, would find it interesting.
On a side note: the book does address the events of Abrams sequel trilogy with an interesting angle. That the New Republic essentially didn't do enough de-Nazification and that led to their downfall. This approach to those terrible movies doesn't entirely succeed, but does make them a little more interesting. And matches what we've seen in real life reconstructions after the downfall of various regimes.
robterrell · 1d ago
My immediate headcannon was: Dedra goes to prison for sedition and builds parts of the second Death Star; is liberated after the death of the emperor; as a (purportedly) rebel-aligned political prisoner is held in esteem (that Loni should have gotten!) She works for the New Republic and rebuilds the police state machinery that ultimately leads to the first order.
cjcenizal · 1d ago
George Boole would have loved a show called “Andor”.
globalnode · 1d ago
Nandxor
colordrops · 1d ago
Had to scroll down far too long to find this on an HN thread about and/or
briian · 1d ago
Unoriginal opinion: Andor is the best Star Wars TV Show/Film since Disney took over.
But, the reason it probably did so well was they let people like Christophe just make something cool instead of overly commercial.
I'd love to see VCs start funding film production like they fund video games. Maybe then we'd have a genuinely new film the quality of Andor, that was as popular as the original Star Wars instead of another thing inside of Star Wars.
Something genuinely new, there's only been remakes recently.
I just want a new universe to geek out on.
praveen9920 · 1d ago
>> Right now everything is going wireless. Video is wireless. Lights are wireless. Sound is wireless. It’s all good, but there’s a lot of congestion on sets with all those things combined. Sometimes those nice tools don’t work because there’s too much technology on set
I’ve been there. Too much tech and compatibility among them is a major source of frustration. For a movie tech guys I see that as opportunity to come up with an OS where everything can be integrated where all stakeholders being users and multiple technologies working together with cohesion
nwlotz · 1d ago
"Made with love" is a concept that's subjective but real. You can tell Andor was made with love, while the sequel trilogy looks like it was made with a set of release criteria designed by consultants.
Not to mention I don't even put Andor in the category of a typical Star Wars story. It's just great geopolitical writing. The boardroom scenes were some of my favorites of any show I've ever watched.
RataNova · 16h ago
The whole "as long as I’m learning, I'm happy" mindset hits hard, especially for anyone in creative fields trying not to burn out
neom · 16h ago
Indeed. I'm apparently good at it, won 4 Emmys for docs, ditched out before 30 because I couldn't take the mindnumpingly boring place I landed when I stopped learning, the work to push my creativity would have ruined me, way easier to ship a business creatively than a film.
enopod_ · 10h ago
Cinematography looks great indeed, framing, composition, depth of field, lighting, all outstanding. But the colors? It all looks quite sallow to me, the colors are boring.
I am colorblind (protanopia), so to me colors _do_ look a little sallow, but I'm used to it, I don't know anything else. But when a movie or tv show looks like this, it makes the whole thing super boring to look at. Little contrast, bleached, like they pulled the saturation bar waaay much to the left. It's a pitty, because strong colors can also transport emotions. I'm not asking for Teletubbies-style coloring here, but a tad more here and there would have been very nice.
replete · 1d ago
The sets are beautiful, but in this season some of the lens choices have resulted in so much CA/distortion outside the focus that you miss out on seeing them properly - to point of frustration. Possibly not noticeable at HD, but glaring in 4K.
kevinsync · 1d ago
Just conjecture, but this might also be what Apple does with a lot of their TV+ series that are filmed for Immersive / Spatial Video (shot stereoscopically and end up in MV-HEVC format). On a regular screen it ends up looking like a super weird bokeh towards the edges of the image.
jajko · 1d ago
There are certain things that simply look better at lower resolutions (and vice versa)
IshKebab · 1d ago
I thought it was great except for that one scene where they're eating in the wheat fields... It's just so weirdly obvious that it's a set and you can really clearly see where the set ends and the green screens start. Dunno why.
MattyRad · 1d ago
I thought it was great except for the final episode of season 1.
Spoilers:
People seem to gush over Maarva's hologram speech, I thought it was pretty weak (it started good then it was fumbled).
Maarva's act of rebellion should have been killing herself to deliver her speech at the right time. She's old and sickly, so it'd add gravitas and cost effectively nothing. Then she should have said that she'd resisted all her life, but killing herself was her first act of rebellion. Then the bomb that gets thrown into the Empire ranks should have been baked into her brick, giving her the chance to fight posthumously.
They had nearly all the plot points set up so nicely for the slam dunk, I was perplexed when it ended so dryly.
kennyadam · 1d ago
Did you read the article? That specfific scene is discussed.
buyucu · 1d ago
Andor is absolutely amazing. After the shameless cash-grab attempt that was the Sequel Trilogy, Andor feels like a breath of fresh air.
Denise Gough and Elizabeth Dulau are particularly good.
lucideer · 1d ago
If Denise Gough isn't drowning in awards on the back of this it isn't a just world.
(albeit every single other performance in the massive ensemble cast was also excellent)
For reference, Rings of Power, Jupiter's Legacy and Citadel (US version) cost about twice as much per episode on Amazon, and Game of Thrones on HBO started at five to six million per episode and went up to 15 million by the final season.
lucideer · 7h ago
I haven't seen the rest of your comparators but twice as much for Rings of Power - one of the cheapest looking fantasy/scifi shows I've seen in some time - is shocking.
BugsJustFindMe · 1d ago
Even the set photos are color graded teal and orange.
sgt · 1d ago
Andor is a masterpiece. I recommend everyone to see it. Season 1 is probably the best, but season 2 just continues the brilliance. Unfortunately there won't be a season 3 though - they're making a final movie.
Denvercoder9 · 1d ago
> they're making a final movie.
They're not making a movie; the entire series is a prequel to the 2016 movie Rogue One.
entropie · 1d ago
Well, in almost 40 years, the entire timeline has been shaken up several times and films and series have been inserted again and again
In any case, i would be careful with such absolute statements
hotsauceror · 1d ago
Perhaps your cautionary admonishments are unwarranted in this specific scenario.
It is logical enough to conclude that a story ending in two intelligence agents flying off for a time-sensitive meeting with a confidential informant, is an immediate prequel to the story that begins with the same two intelligence agents landing and meeting that confidential informant.
This is not quite the same situation as the end of Rogue One and A New Hope, where some people make the argument that Rogue One ends just a few minutes before ANH begins; I am not convinced by that argument, although the cinematography certain seems to be leading us there.
mentalpiracy · 1d ago
>>> This is not quite the same situation as the end of Rogue One and A New Hope, where some people make the argument that Rogue One ends just a few minutes before ANH begins; I am not convinced by that argument, although the cinematography certain seems to be leading us there.
The ending scene of RO is the data handoff and narrow escape of the Tantive IV with Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO on it.
How is that not a direct continuity into the opening scene of A New Hope?
hotsauceror · 1d ago
Unless there was some sort of tractor beam, the Tantive IV did, in fact, escape, and may have been able to jump to light speed. In such an event, any eventual recapture by the Star Destroyer and battle with Vader's boarding team would have looked exactly the same as the escape sequence. There's nothing definitively saying "and they were recaptured within a few minutes of their initial escape."
worldsayshi · 1d ago
> they're making a final movie.
I think you might've fallen for some of the jokes about it being a prequel.
cwillu · 1d ago
Beyond rogue one?
sgt · 1d ago
Yes, a Rogue One sequel movie. So it'll be a continuation of the Andor series.
They really take their time filming this kinda stuff so don't hold your breath.
mcv · 1d ago
I would love a series of movies that run parallel to the original trilogy, but in the style of Andor, following the dirty ground work of the rebellion, rather than its handful of shining heroes.
hotsauceror · 1d ago
I think there's some room for stories of the seamy underbelly of the Rebellion, like Cara Dune and the droppers. But I think it would be easy to go to this well too many times.
fcatalan · 1d ago
But Rogue One ends literally setting the opening chase at the beginning of A New Hope, so no space for a straight sequel there.
Maybe some Kleya "John Wick in Space" sidequest?
reimertz · 1d ago
Sorry but I would flag this as AI-generated unless you can provide a reference.
meowface · 1d ago
The user definitely is not AI but I think they may've misread something or fell for a meme/joke they saw.
There indeed is absolutely no planned sequel to or continuation of Andor, nor currently any known plans for the creator of it to create anything else in this franchise. I'd sure like it if he did, though.
sgt · 1d ago
I might indeed have fallen for something. I trusted an untrustworthy source. Sorry
bdangubic · 1d ago
it can only be a prequel unless they want to make a season out of Rogue One movie
sandworm101 · 1d ago
>> Andor is a masterpiece.
No. A masterpiece would not have any fluff. There are all number of scenes/characters that could be cut from Andor without any real impact. Entire scenes and characters could be dropped without impacting the narrative. (The entire forest planet sequence imho.)
Andor is a product of the "for your consideration" form of review made popular by the Academy (oscars). Each scene is excellent. Each scene is a cinematic tour de force. But they are all independent scenes. Rearrange the order, shuffle the scene deck, and little changes as the scenes are not dependent on each other. The overall narrative is thin. That may make for good/popular television but it is not deserving of "masterpiece".
ecocentrik · 1d ago
Your pedantry probably requires a rewatch.
I also think "masterpiece" is a heavy term to throw around but the emotional impact of the this series and the complexity of its narrative as it catalogs a hero's journey from reluctant participant to true believer with an epic story arc can be held up next to most film and historical epics like Laurence of Arabia, Ben Hur, The Matrix, the Original Star Wars trilogy, Dune, Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator, The Handmaid's Tale (series), The Odyssey (epic poem). His personal journey which leads to his persecution and enslavement, his role in leading a slave uprising, rescuing his friends from the aftermath of a rebel uprising, building the foundations of a rebel army, risking his life countless times and ultimately sacrificing himself to prevent his enemy from having an insurmountable edge.
The series makes the very popular "Avengers" film series look like trite dogshit and does the same for most of the "Star Wars" sequels and prequels so I don't fault people for using the term "masterpiece".
sandworm101 · 1d ago
A masterpiece does not require an enormous story, theme or anything else "epic". That is a characteristic of blockbusters.
ecocentrik · 1d ago
My point was to make that distinction between an masterpiece and an epic while still showing that Andor holds up against some of the most celebrated epics ever created. Comparing it to My Cousin Vinny is ridiculous. You should be comparing it to other works in the same form, other epic hero's journeys.
Was your gripe about superfluous scenes, where you mentioned the forest planet, a reference to the first few episodes of season 2? That forest plant is Yavin IV, the plant where the rebels eventually build their first base, and those rebels are some of the first recruits to the rebel army. I believe those scenes were intended to show how the rebellion lacked leadership and how Andor and others had to step up to provide that leadership.
dalanmiller · 1d ago
What films could be categorised in this way?
sandworm101 · 1d ago
Jaws.
The Shawshank Redemption.
Alien.
The first Jurassic Park.
My Cousin Vinney.
I would say that there is not a single scene that can be removed from these movies without negatively impacting the story/theme/narrative.
Some say that Star Wars IV and V fit this definition but I would say there is some eyecandy fluff that could be cut.
spankibalt · 1d ago
> I would say that there is not a single scene that can be removed from these movies without negatively impacting the story/theme/narrative.
Appropriating Saint Exupéryian (et al.) notions regarding the unattainable (perfection) to judge an artwork is a sucker's bet to me.
And in the cited works I rate as cinematic masterpieces scene editing (e. g. removal) is most certainly possible without having a negative impact on your criteria, but that is a completely moot point anyways.
With regards to Andor's forest arc: It is, amongst other things that are most certainly more appreciated by a specific set of people, a very interesting mediation on time and the notion "where there's competence, there's always also incompetence", often manifesting in very comical and surreal ways.
everyone · 1d ago
My friend was telling me Andor S2 is insanely good. So I'm seriously considering watching it.
However, I had previously watched a few eps of S1, and everything was fine and very well made.. but I just didnt care about anything that was going on, so I stopped.
Just wondering did anyone else feel the same about S1 and then get blown away by S2?
udkl · 1d ago
Yes, I am the same. I enjoyed the entire S2 even though I left S1 after 1 or 2 episodes.
S2 has great, great acting and characters along-with good pacing since they apparently jammed in at-least 2 seasons into a single season. It starts out strong too.
S2 shows the larger republic and it's politics and factions. This gives you a broader galactic context of what's going on.
This enamored me and got me to go back and re-watch the first 6 movies. I originally watched them as a teen and was lost at the time. Really started to appreciate the setting and story now.
I need to go back and watch the remainder of S1 though since they say it gets better later.
sandworm101 · 1d ago
>> But at the same time, I’m so happy that the digital revolution happened. It’s a bigger toolbox for your creativity, especially for night scenes. It’s much easier to light something natural, and to do something with less.
No. This is why everything is so dark. With film, cinematographers had to hedge their bets. They could not risk a scene being too dark, something they would not be sure of until the film was developed. Today, digital tech means they can see the results live on monitor screens. So they can cut the lights and make everything super dark without worry. Forget "natural". There is nothing natural about watching a screen in the dark where your eyes cannot properly adjust as they would in the real world. Also, I want to watch TV in my kitchen without having to douse every light in the house.
cwillu · 1d ago
Andor didn't really have any issues with that, IMO.
LilBytes · 1d ago
Depends on your TV, watching it on an LED TV was difficult, darks bled into each other. On OLED (and I assume Micro-LED) though it was just _phenominal_.
cwillu · 1d ago
I watched it on an old lcd in a bright room, and personally had no issues.
nicoburns · 1d ago
I definitely have this problem a lot with modern TV. Full screen brightness and it's still hard to make out the details. Perhaps they're targeting HDR screens that have more dynamic range?
mkesper · 1d ago
Had this when playing streams from PC to TV. Had to increase gamma a whole lot, just increasing brightness does not really help.
xnx · 1d ago
> Full screen brightness and it's still hard to make out the details
LCD screens can't do true black. Film, CRT, and OLED can.
ghaff · 1d ago
A lot of stuff is dark and a lot of sound is muddled. My hearing isn't the very best but I've sort of surrendered and just use close captioned for everything.
meowface · 1d ago
My hearing is pretty good and I am a native English speaker and it is shocking how often I need to turn on subtitles every few minutes in some new show I'm watching because I have no clue what was said even after rewinding three times. At the same time, I am extremely distracted by subtitles so I can't leave them on permanently.
The darkness problem is also quite annoying, though varies a lot by show. I just started watching Silo, and while I understand most scenes are supposed to take place in a pretty dark environment (inside of a silo), everything is just so dark in almost all scenes.
kenhwang · 1d ago
I echo the sound/dialog complaint for Andor as well. I think it's one of the few high production budget shows in recent memory that sounded like it was mixed for 2.0 audio.
Watching on my 7.1 setup was actually more annoying than watching on my computer with 2.0. There's a very obvious bass-boost as if they assumed there isn't subwoofer in the setup, and dialog didn't get any clearer with a dedicated center, it was still kinda floaty across the front. Surround channels just sounded like they echo'd the L/R channels.
JKCalhoun · 1d ago
I respect the idea that all dialog need not be decipherable (any more than it tends to be in real life). Incidental sounds/comments are okay as long as a key plot-point does not suffer (and you'd like to think they would make sure that was not the case of the more important lines).
lupire · 1d ago
If the most accessible surface content is already better than a normal show, then adding extra hard to access content, for world building and rewatch enhancements, is more than fair. Andor passes that bar.
atoav · 1d ago
As someone who grew up on the countryside: many people don't really know how dark it can get outside, as you mentioned your eyes do adjust, but that will only take you so far. I remember walking home on a cloudy new moon night through the woods with both eyes fully opened and adjusted and I couldn't even make out the contour of the sky.
So yeah, not seeing shit can be natural. Whether it is good for the narration or 100% of your viewers like it is a different can of worms. Let's only say that the cinematographers thought making the viewer have to concentrate on what is going on at that point was benefitial.
The "natural" part about shooting digitally is that you can go outside and use a camera in dusk and the picture isn't all black or incredibly grainy as it was back when you shot at film. And that's about it. In digital you can shoot with available light only in more situations than before. In the end cameras perceive light situations different than the human eye so it is still the task of the cinematographer to do that translation.
xorcist · 1d ago
What I don't understand is how film crews can work together when they are larger than two pizza teams? And when they want to change something, it's almost like they just do it? Surely they have to file a ticket with the Product Owner first? And why don't they wait until the current sprint is done before doing things that clearly belongs to the next one? Why do the producer run around speaking in precise terms when he is clearly in the position of Business Owner and should stick to user stories? It's a wonder that the result is even watchable!
Sarcasm aside, there is something to be said about industries that let professionals do their work, and everyone is doing their bit towards a clearly defined shared goal. Considering the IT industry has taken so much ideas from industrial production, it wouldn't hurt to take some from artistic production too. After all, both are work concerned with refining blueprints where the final draft ends up being the product.
crazygringo · 1d ago
Perhaps you're confusing planning with execution.
All the things you're describing -- in the spirit of tickets, sprints, etc. -- do happen. They're called pre-production. It takes years (months if you're lucky) to set up how everything will run on set. Producers have a huge list of actionables (tickets), and there is constant iteration (sprints) of parts of the script, of what the film's visual look will be, the tone, figuring out the budget, the crew, etc. And there are huge differences in responsibility between producer and director. A producer doesn't "run around speaking in precise terms" when that would step on the feet of the director, the cinematographer, etc. That would be micromanaging and unprofessional. The producer does very much stick to "user stories". When film crews want to change something, they don't "just do it". They very much do check in with the director or showrunner.
I suspect you're talking about execution, where everyone does "just do" things. When filming, every minute counts and shit needs to get done. Yes, every single person is tremendously empowered to do what's right, within their remit. But that only works because preproduction already worked out most of the kinks, and they should all basically be on the same page. But even then, things constantly go south. Shots take hours to set up and then turn out to be wrong for an infinite number of reasons. There are endless compromises. And during that process, only one person is in charge -- the director -- because they have to make a ton of decisions to compensate for all the things going wrong. So it's teamwork... but it's also a dictatorship and once the director makes a decision after collecting the input they want you do not argue.
You seem to be under the impression that film production is somehow more individually empowering or trusting than software development. It's not.
JohnBooty · 10h ago
Great post.
Also, unlike software engineering, the film industry has been around for 100+ years. They've figured stuff out.
(We could say software engineering has been around for 50+ years, but I think that in its modern form it's probably more like 20 years. Highly subjective statement, I know.)
mr_toad · 15h ago
> confusing planning with execution.
Jira in four words.
photochemsyn · 19h ago
Interesting insight, fits this:
> Kirill: How much time did you have in pre-production to talk about ideas, visuals and inspirations?
> Christophe: We had a lot of time, and it’s a rare thing. The director Ariel Kleiman and I went through the same process for each episode. We were reading the scripts together, and throwing ideas and brainstorming. We did that twice for each episode, and then we started making moodboards. After that we did another read through, and then we started blocking the scenes. We had a lot of 3D pre-viz with ILM, with our camera and lenses in those virtual sets. That allowed us to start looking for shots and to refine everything.
echelon · 21h ago
> You seem to be under the impression that film production is somehow more individually empowering or trusting than software development. It's not.
It's sad that tens of thousands of kids attend film school, yet there are too few roles of autonomy for them.
The "Hollywood" system only makes a few thousand film and tv productions of scale per year. There are way more people with visions and ideas and dreams, and they're all left to wither on the vine.
How many Chris Nolans, Stanley Kubricks, and Ridley Scotts have we lost to the rat race?
I think this is the biggest potential for AI. Suddenly all of those directors and dreamers who couldn't { hack, struggle, nepo } their way to the top of the pyramid can pursue their vision.
YouTube and TikTok have been huge enablers of creativity. They're a much fairer and wider platform for enablement and distribution, and already today's youth are setting this target as their new generational dream.
We're likely about to see a film industry that resembles the gaming, publishing, and music industries. Studios will exist for large scale "AAA" fare, but individual auteurs and small teams will be able to make their mark. Steam Greenlight, Bandcamp, Wattpad, and Medium for the director. It's like what the DAW did for music production - no more need to spend tens of thousands to book a studio - except even more orders of magnitude in cost reduction.
We've needed studios for two things historically: (1) distribution (2) financing. YouTube and streaming solved #1, and Gen AI puts film [1] squarely within the "ramen budget" of college students. So pillar #2 is about to fall.
[1] I don't mean low budget films. Gen AI will give directors the VFX to achieve expansive science fiction and fantasy visions, exotic locales, and a stunningly beautiful cast (that most audiences prefer to watch).
munificent · 1d ago
A big part of the difference is the timelines and scale.
When you ship a piece of software, it's often expected to be usable by a million people reliably for years.
In film and video production, you're duct taping shit together to get it to stay in one piece just long enough to get the shot and get the film out the door. You're fixing shit in post because you were in a hurry on set. It's a sort of barely controlled chaos.
Game development is somewhere between the two.
cortesoft · 1d ago
> When you ship a piece of software, it's often expected to be usable by a million people reliably for years.
Is this really true anymore? I feel like people release software now expecting to continue to patch it repeatedly, so there isn't a push to get it perfect the first time.
amarshall · 1d ago
Even so folks are still maintaining it. Once a film is done, it’s done and no one looks back.
DavidPiper · 1d ago
Except George ;)
firesteelrain · 1d ago
You are right. It certainly depends on the industry and rigor involved. Safety and mission critical certainly needs to last years whereas people have become accustomed to accepting updates in other cases
MangoToupe · 1d ago
Yea a movie is basically the most expensive demo imaginable in software engineering terms. It's a feat that you only need to get right a single time.
Curiously I think this shares a lot with other types of engineering. If you're putting men on the moon, you have to get everything right a single time.
geeunits · 1d ago
But we do 'right a single time' every time. It's groundhog day.
goalieca · 1d ago
The shot, once made, is forever unless you do an expensive reshoot. Software bugs happen and people have low expectations for bugs even in highly scaling software like YouTube.
lolinder · 1d ago
Aside from what others have pointed out about fixability in post: People have pretty low expectations for most shots in most films. Every film has many mistakes in it that film buffs have fun cataloguing and no one else ever notices. Part of the art of filmmaking is knowing what must be fixed and what can be ignored, which is awfully similar to the job of a product manager.
esafak · 1d ago
Haven't you heard of "We'll fix it in post"?
Given the way things are, whole movies are going to be made in post...
HillRat · 1d ago
One thing about Andor is that Gilroy specifically encouraged the directors not to shoot a lot of coverage and focus instead on very intentional shot lists, which both sped up shooting (critical given the cost of the production, COVID requirements, and the Hollywood strikes) and resulted in a much more crafted look, though it required a lot of detailed up-front planning. It’s really quite striking how different that approach is from the usual way things are shot, edited, and cleaned these days.
ozim · 1d ago
When someone is fixing it in postprod most of complexity of the initial shot is gone never to be seen again. It is not like they fix some colors on the scene and then last scene of the movie suddenly changes to something different :D
cluckindan · 1d ago
Have you seen the amount of changes George Lucas did when editing the prequel trilogy of Star Wars? They were digitally composing individual actor performances within a shot.
MangoToupe · 1d ago
Isn't Lucas known for being an outlier in the industry in his devotion to post-production editing? I honestly don't know. But I am unsure that other production teams are capable of pulling this off and shipping on schedule with the same aptitude.
monocasa · 1d ago
He pioneered that modern post production heavy flow for blockbusters, and everything listed is pretty common in that niche.
Honestly it's almost more notable these days when that kind of stuff doesn't happen.
You're basically paying more money to decouple and delay decisions as much as possible.
MangoToupe · 1d ago
I've also heard this practice blamed for enabling a decade of "bad cgi"—visuals are reworked and reworked until time runs out, and in a rush they ship visuals that are worse than in movies 20 years ago. Explicitly: it's not the artist, it's a production pipeline failure. And indeed, it's easy finding marvel movies whose CGI looks closer to that of a video game than Lucas's prequels. Heck, even the sequel movies fall into this category.
esafak · 1d ago
Tech debt!
jimbokun · 20h ago
Yes and it really detracted from the quality of those films.
ozim · 1d ago
Greedo shooting first didn’t make empire good guys just Han less of a bad boy. ;)
Wonderful documentary, super recommended watching.
Though, nit pick -- when people say "fix it in post", they're not usually talking about editing.
Editing is an expected, normal, traditional part of the art of filmmaking. You're not changing or fixing the shots themselves; you are cutting and pasting footage sequentially to tell a coherent and compelling story. The YT you linked is a masterful example of how Star Wars was saved through this sort of editing.
"Fix it in post" refers more to making sloppy shots full of errors and then correcting those errors later with CGI.
Does that make sense? The art of stitching shots together, versus shooting crappy shots and CGIing them later.
greedo · 9h ago
I would expand it a bit past CGI. It can include using a less interesting shot but adding ADR to it, filling in a gap between scenes etc.
troupo · 1d ago
Yes, and movies are noticeably worse for it
JohnBooty · 10h ago
I don't want to go down too much of a rabbit hole talking about an analogy, but boy this analogy seems off!
They do multiple, sometimes dozens, of takes for most shots.
plemer · 1d ago
But that’s where “we’ll get it post” comes in. The shot is just the starting point.
That said, directors shoot v differently - some will do literal hundreds of takes and still do plenty of post, others will shoot max three takes and send to edit.
RataNova · 16h ago
Game dev sits in that weird middle ground where you have the unpredictability of a player interacting with the system and the high production demands of film. You can't just duct-tape a level together and hope no one notices
k__ · 1d ago
This.
Music, film, and text are static. Software is dynamic.
whartung · 23h ago
To be pedantic, requirements are dynamic. Software is a reflection of that.
However, the fact that software can readily embrace dynamism, can make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
But back when games were shipped on CD or burned into ROM cartridges, it was much more of a ship it and it’s DONE process and culture.
k__ · 14h ago
Ah, yes, of course
What I meant is that software is interactive, while a video, for example, is not, it's static in the sense that it will always played in the same way.
imbnwa · 1d ago
>When you ship a piece of software, it's often expected to be usable by a million people reliably for years.
And what specifically, comparatively, has modern corporate software production organization contributed to to this point?
It's incredible, everyone has pride and position. And are unique in stature and glue. No one person is unnecessary. All rely on each other to succeed. It's more army than office
mystifyingpoi · 1d ago
You are comparing a poorly managed software project with a well managed movie production. The conclusion of such is obvious.
Have you ever watched a "bad" movie? There is your answer :)
whywhywhywhy · 9h ago
You joke but if you're filming in a part of the world with unions then there are a whole other ball of bureaucracy and silliness that gets in the way of just getting the shot that makes tickets, stories and standups seem smooth sailing.
bombcar · 1d ago
Another thing is that the jobs are very defined and regimented - not that the person doing A1 couldn’t do a bunch of the other things, but he knows exactly what he is doing and not what others may be doing.
mhh__ · 1d ago
Software projects don't usually have the luxury of a violent but intuitive dictator running the thing. Obviously a mega budget tv show is going to be run from afar most of the time.
Software can be like this, e.g. if you were building a small team to do something you cared about it would probably be more like a 3* kitchen than support team inside IBM or something.
khazhoux · 14h ago
The producer runs the show, not the director
greedo · 9h ago
It's much, much more collaborative than that. The role of a producer can be limited to managing the financial side of the production. Or they can be involved with coordinating the production itself. The director has the most say over what is shot, how it's edited, what the score should be like. A good producer can help make a film excellent, but if you have a bad director, or the "wrong" director, then nothing the producer does will fix that issue.
Of course there are also Executive producers who are far far up the financial food chain of a movie, and sometimes these titles are also just vanity plates for the production.
As an example of the value of a good/great producer, look at Gary Kurtz. He was essential for both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but wasn't part of the team for Return of the Jedi. In my opinion, that's one of the reasons that ROTJ is the worst of the three films. Lucas didn't have someone pushing back against his worse tendencies.
For an example of the wrong director, look no further than Rogue One. While it's very difficult to sus out what was wrong with Gareth Edwards directing, Tony Gilroy was brought in to fix the film. Both are appropriately quiet about what the changes were, what was re-shot (simple professional courtesy), but the result is a film that (while I love it) is just slightly off.
bazoom42 · 16h ago
> when they want to change something, it's almost like they just do it?
Film production at this level have a lot of process. There are many teams and the director or showrunner acts as “product owner”. The crew is very hierachical and specialized with clearly defined turfs. Pre-production is iterative but when shooting starts it is waterfall - it is incredibly expensive to make small changes after shooting have started. Digital has made it somewhat more iterative since you can “fix it in post” but this still has its limits. You can remove a beard and add a spaceship but you cannot fix bad acting or bad lines.
Film production is definitely not just letting the creatives run wild. Any idea has a price tag attached and will ultimately have to be approved by the accounting team. And film production tend to have a hard deadline and no possibility of patch updated.
Software development is a lot easier since you can keep developing iteratively.
dylan604 · 1d ago
There's a creative energy that comes when something that has been planned for days/weeks/months suddenly can't be done but the expense of the equipment, cast/crew, location is going to be owed anyways is one of my favorite things about working in production. Only the largest of box office budget productions can actually shut down, but even they have the "behind schedule, over budget" issues too. Everyone works within their teams to solve the issue in ways that someone not on set would probably never know about, but ends up "saving the day" or whatever. There's a lot of hurry up and wait on set, but sometimes those hurry up moments are a lot of fun.
dlcarrier · 1d ago
In film, they say "we'll fix it in post" as a joke. In software development, they treat it as a reality, except they never get around to it.
Software development really has gone off the deep end. In any other field, people actually document what they do, and verify that it works, before releasing anything. Restaurants have recipes and food handling requirements, manufacturers have tolerances and verification, architects have building code, warehouses have inventory management, and so on and so forth. Because non-software development relies on products that actually work, and are not built around the meta game of abusing arbitrary metrics, workers can rely on other departments to make sensible choices.
Fun fact: Waterfall development never existed; it's a straw man argument against the common sense idea of finishing what your working on, before starting something new.
AI is going to pop the bubble of software development, not because it's good at it, but because because the entire field is too broken to compete against it.
QuiEgo · 1d ago
> two pizza teams
Found the Amazonian. It’s amazing how the corporate jargon seeps in, no matter how hard you try :). In some ways, deciding to work there is definitely a one way door.
fishtoaster · 1d ago
Or just someone who's familiar with the terminology. I've never worked at Amazon, but I've heard the term for years as an Amazon thing.
rockemsockem · 1d ago
Do people really unironically talk about the importance of pizza teams at Amazon?
Film sets can seem enigmatic, the pacing, the language, the decorum. Film has over a hundred years of cultural development that manifests on set as set etiquette. Combined with mature unions that actively and heavily defend their trades. It can seem ridiculous and wasteful to the uninitiated… and indy productions split off constantly to try and reinvent the wheel only for individuals later in their career to converge back to established industry practices. In software there seems to be an overwhelming and toxic opinion that tech can solve all problems and that disruption at all cost is good. While not to dismiss these opinions wholeheartedly the wake of their destruction is not to be ignored. In film the human element is not only never ignored, it is the soul reason for being. As a creative endeavor whose output ideally is art, the working relationships, delegation of duties and decision making power is well established and enforced in the interest of efficient collaboration. Software on the other hand seems to be fully staffed with individuals who rarely get past tier four on the Maslow hierarchy, are entirely individualistic, highly competitive to a fault and in a never ending combative relationship with management that seems to be highly antithetical to the act of creation. For lack of deeper insights I chock it up to different financial incentives in the respective industries writ large. One is making cultural artistic or purely entertainment artifacts for humans, the other arguably creating solutions maybe for humans maybe not with the only goal of always more money no matter what.
kranke155 · 22h ago
Anyone who’s worked on a smaller set understands why a bigger set makes sense.
kranke155 · 22h ago
This sometimes happens.
But a lot of movies are terrible because this doesn’t happen.
The truth about the world is that it’s poorly managed, and competent people don’t always rise to the top of complex organisations.
The less, the better. Its junk food after all and humans think better when hungry. :)
RataNova · 16h ago
Everyone knows their role, but also trusts others to own theirs
yread · 1d ago
These processes were designed so that software can be made by dumb interchangeable cogwheels that change jobs once per year.
techpineapple · 1d ago
I imagine this to greatly idealize the film industry, I mean, Tony Gilroy did have to “file a ticket with the product owner” to put the word “fuck” in one of the episodes and was denied. If you have a lot of cred you can get Final Cut and creative freedom, but I imagine most film productions are as bad if not worse than your average scrum experience.
Not the least of which, if you screw up a release in your software engineering career, you’ll probably get many chances to correct and have a fine if not better career later in. Fuck up a release almost any time in your film career and you may never work again.
atonse · 1d ago
My guess is that adding "fuck" would've changed the show's potential returns and content ratings, which is a pretty big change when projecting revenue, ad sales, etc.
Rather than "hey I just wanted to add one word and they pushed back"
triceratops · 1d ago
I've never watched Andor but I can't imagine any Star Wars content with profanity. There's nothing wrong with profanity. Many of my favorite movies and TV shows have it in spades. I just don't see it fitting in with Star Wars.
atemerev · 1d ago
Though a single "fuck" at this Jedi children scene in Revenge of Sith wouldn't be out of place.
jimbokun · 23h ago
Seems a little closer to the process Jobs and Ive had at Apple.
majkinetor · 1d ago
Entertainment is not critical.
wizardforhire · 9h ago
I think in the interest of hn pedantry we need some pushback on what our threshold is for what is critical or not? Lives on the line? Cleary critical!
Anything after this is up for debate.
Lots of money at risk? Maybe.
Lots of people being affected? Maybe
Lots of people losing their jobs? Maybe
A company going out of business? Maybe
While most things in entertainment do not pass the first test. There are plenty of examples that absolutely pass all of the others.
I only say most because there are numerous circumstances where in the entertainment industries where maybe not always the final product but definitely during production where lives are on the line.
I have a problem with defining things as critical or not because you have no idea what your products or solutions may end up being used for. If things are being used by people in a production capacity and the collective stake of the success or failure of the endeavor rests upon the tools and solutions performing as designed then one could argue these are critical. But to whom? When designers don't see their solutions as critical it breeds laziness and pushes the responsibility for auditing onto the user who most likely doesn't even know to audit because they were sold a solution and made the mistake of taking a vendors word. Which maybe we should all be tearing down all of our electronics and reverse engineering all of our software so that we can have some semblance of functionality… And I know plenty of studios which do just this down to tearing down and making all and I do mean all of their cables because for them one stray bit of interference is critical.
Why are they in this position? Because nothing and no one in tech or any other industry can be trusted. And when your career and reputation, and livelihood is on the line then everything starts to look critical. Maybe its only the livelihood of one? But to them its critical.
majkinetor · 4h ago
Critical are things that make your daily life seriously disturbed if there are issues beyond your control. Things like:
1. Life
1. House
2. Salary
3. Reputation
4. Physical or mental health
5. Time
> definitely during production where lives are on the line
You can say that for any company - if they wired electricity in a bad way on my job, lives can be lost.
> because you have no idea what your products or solutions may end up being used for
Many products are used exactly for 1 thing. For example, online banking. You don't use it to for dating, although you theoretically can if you really want to
> But to whom?
Only end users.
atemerev · 1d ago
Neither is most of software.
majkinetor · 15h ago
0 entertainment is critical.
hoseja · 12h ago
The propaganda very much is, to certain people.
majkinetor · 5h ago
Anything can be critical to certain people, that is irrelevant. Pizza, for example :)
api · 1d ago
This is the joy of physical reality as opposed to software. Atoms vs bits.
Software is different because digital systems are messes of rigid causality. If reality were like software moving a table could trigger the elevator to stop working and birds to fly upside down by breaking DNS by way of a change in server load triggering Kubernetes to get into a weird state where it kills and restarts DNS too fast to allow it to properly initialize and serve requests, but only when it is raining in Bangalore, India on a Tuesday.
The other nice thing about reality is reusability. A table used in one movie set could be used in a different movie without rebuilding the table.
There has been a ton of work on good system design to avoid this, like well done (not enterprise Java) OOP, and we were getting there until the web and cloud hit and we decided to trash all that and go back to piles of slop on Unix servers. Still wouldn’t have been as inherently causally ordered as physics but it might have been nicer.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos · 1d ago
> cinematography
"How do I light and shoot this green screen?"
7bit · 1d ago
I found Andor incredibly boring. The characters were unlikeable. Dialog was bland. I have nothing against a slow burn, but that show didn't even light a fire in the first place.
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imetatroll · 1d ago
Andor is OK. I didn't manage to finish the first season though and there are a few scenes - like the "training to blend in" - that are just totally corny and just seem "cheap".
I disagree with the sentiment that Andor goes beyond the original trilogy. The world building in the originals is incredible.
sdenton4 · 1d ago
The first season seriously builds up. The prison arc and the last episodes on Ferrix are absolutely top notch.
My_kent_NURBEK · 1d ago
An interview with the movie operator Christoph Nuyens about his work on the second season of the series “Andor” is a deep and inspiring immersion in the world of modern cinematography. Nyuens shares his unique experience, starting from the transition from analog film to digital technologies, and emphasizes how this expanded his creative arsenal. His story about the use of RGBW LED lighting is especially impressive, which allows you to literally “draw” the scene in real time, creating an atmosphere and mood with the incredible accuracy. [pushing-pixels.org] (https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2025/05/20/cinema Tography-Ondor-interView-with-Christophe-nuyens.html? Utm_Source = Chatgpt.com)
He also describes in detail how modern technologies, such as LED screens and painted backgrounds, allow you to achieve more natural light and visual depths, especially in scenes with restrictions related to the use of a green screen. His approach to creating a unique visual style for each block of episodes inspired by various geographical and cultural references demonstrates a high level of artistic skill and attention to details.
His thoughts on the importance of human interaction on the set and about how the pandemic Covid-19 influenced these aspects of the work sound especially touching. His desire for constant training, adaptation and cooperation with various cultures and teams emphasizes his devotion to the art of cinematography.
In general, an interview with Nuins is not only a story about the technical aspects of filming, but also an inspiring story about passion, perseverance and love for their work. His experience and approach are an excellent example for everyone who strives for perfection in the field of visual narrative.
I'd definitely watch a new movie if it were handled by the same team that made Andor. Prequel, sequel, side story, or re-telling of the originals.
It feels like there's plenty of room in the timeline between those movies to keep telling stories about the rebellion against the Empire, in the same tone as Andor.
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Source: https://screenrant.com/andor-budget-confirmed/
I think Rogue One is the best Star Wars ever and Andor is in the same vein. But.
The savior of the Star Wars brand is always going to be the latest lightsaber-fest for 10-year-olds. That creates customer loyalty that will survive forever. Those kids then grow up and get to bitch about the new lightsaber-fest, and to fawn over the artsy drama.
> On the other hand, I guess it's still a business, at the end of the day.
You're right, in the sense that Andor was an exception regarding every other SW show on Disney+ for the past 4 years. All had high production costs and seems like Andor is the only one which recouped itself. Acolyte was a spectacular viewship failure.
So the business logic would be to cap costs, most likely in half for now on. I don't have high expectations of Disney learning the right lessons from Andor & Tony.
[1] https://www.thewrap.com/star-wars-andor-revenue-disney-plus/
The inverse question too: why do streaming platforms cancel popular shows? Watcher count doesn't seem to be the metric I think it is.
The empire is a compelling thing to make stories about, and what Andor does well is actually make the whole thing believable. It’s not a bunch of cackling supervillains aiming to be maximally evil, like it is in so many of the movies… it’s an actually-believable thing, filled with characters with their own motivations, none of whom are explicitly evil by themselves, but through all of them evil is done. The episodes of season 1 when Andor is arrested and sent to prison are the most compelling and actually-scary depictions of the empire ever put to film. It’s just that good.
Whoever governs really should implement a R&D program to eradicate the midi-chlorian infestation and rid the galaxy of the scourge of both Jedi and Sith in one fell swoop.
A storyline which I'd argue was strongest in A New Hope & the initial trilogy & was weakened by the increased focus on individual storylines in the anakin & rey trilogies.
Whereas Senator Mothma's story arc had me engrossed from beginning to end. From the complexities of a Senator's social life, to her financial difficulties, to the medieval like politics of marrying off her daughter for the sake of a political and financial alliance, to her risking more and more, to her brave and powerful speech condemning the empire.
There is nothing in the prequels that hits nearly as hard. Because it's all dialog the audience isn't paying attention to because the Jedi stuff is more engaging, and because the political stakes never seem that great.
I honestly hope Disney will eventually remake them from scratch, with the excuse that FX have progressed dramatically since then. They could even reuse McEwan, considering he's supposed to be an older character already.
While "evil guy corrupting a democracy" is certainly a noble and relevant thing to explore, the prequels don't explore that in any useful or fun or insightful way. It's literally just an excuse for pew pew pew lasers and spaceships and laser swords.
(Remarkably, they also make the democracy, and the Jedi who defend it, seem almost universally super boring and dumb and uncool. Making Jedi uncool is some kind of special achievement...)
Even as a real-world allegory, it sucks.
The bad guys in real life aren't even remotely like the Sith, who are physically twisted freaks that are explicitly like "yep! we're evil!"
Real-life bad guys are often good looking and most of them think they're actually doing the right thing.
How did the Rebellion start? How was it organized? What led to building the Death Star? How did they get the plans to give to Leia to give to Luke?
The only part of the prequel trilogy relevant to the story in A New Hope is the final battle between Anakin and Obi Wan.
What's cool about the Force isn't the mechanics of how it works. What's cool about the Force is that it's a mystical thing that's everywhere, binding all living things together.
And we honestly don't need to know how the Rebellion started. It doesn't matter! They are the good guys, and they are messy but kind and loving and cool and they are rebelling against the cold and mean (but also sometimes cool) bad guys. In fact, the more dumb shit I know about them the less I can project myself onto them and see myself in their eyes. Because I have rebelled against mean authoritarian shit before, or at least dreamed of it, but I have never been involved with trade disputes or galactic senates or weird old religions.
This is true IMO 99.99% of the time.
Shockingly to me, Rogue One and Andor are so well done that they are exceptions to the rule.
Giving that concept a thematic heft well beyond its Flash-Gordon-supervillain origins appeared “fully armed and operational” in the story, but in the end it barely rises to subtext.
It's actually better for the Death Star to be unseen, so that its full horror can only be imagined - and hence, becoming greater - in our minds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5lDKjA_7I0
But real-world warfare history is full of these expensive disasters that, in hindsight, were spectacularly dumb ideas.
I don't think the Death Star was meant to be practical. More of a terror weapon or trump card, akin in some ways to nuclear weapons whose true value transcends their practical value. The destruction of Alderaan felt like an allegory for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But they still got built, for good political, and psychological reasons that have nothing to do with cost effectiveness.
In WWII they were absolutely invaluable against a peer enemy in the Pacific theater. They were the single most important bits of military hardware in that war.
They grew more vulnerable over time, first to peer enemies and eventually to rebels funded by sorta-peer enemies like Iran. In 2025, I don't think anybody doubts that a sustained saturation attack would fail to sink or at least prevent a carrier from functioning.
(Though it's also worth noting that the Houthis haven't been able to hit one yet, even with Iranian backing)
Still, a carrier group allows the US to project a tremendous amount of force anywhere in the world, and if a nation state hits one they're going to face an absolutely tremendous amount of military wrath from the US, which kind of gives them a strength beyond their literal combat capability.
They aren't ridiculous in the real world. They are in some theoretical worlds with alternate assumptions about what wars actually happen, but...
> They are utterly useless against well armed opponents.
They are quite useful, though, against the opponents that the US has actually fought against since WWII, though, which are mostly not with opponents that would be “well-armed” in the sense needed to make your claim true, are often also outside of the effective force projection radius of such opponents, and often would be inconvenient for US force projection without having convenient sea-mobile airbases with a air wing the same rough size as the median national air force.
There’s a version of Andor that does a bit more than hint that the Death Star is the ultimate (and ultimately doomed) metaphorical reply to Nemik’s manifesto.
In the final analysis, the Death Star is not about power. It’s not about control. It’s a choice, meant to be the last choice for the Rebellion: Submit, or lose everything you love, everything you were, are, will be, in an instant.
But, in the end, it’s this totalizing impulse that is the Empire’s critical weakness. There are always cracks in the edifice of tyranny. Other choices.
But also yes, it's the closest thing to the original theme since the second movie.
Basically treasure Island/ goonies in space, it is campier than Andor but does what it aims for amazingly. Cause andor can get quite heavy on the fighting fascism and sometimes finding a treasure map is more the vibe than seeing holocaust planning meetings
I didnt watch anything mandalorian past season 2, never watched boba fet, obiwan or ahsoka because I thought it would be Dave Filoni getting action figures and bumping them together, and friends who watched them agree with my intuition. But yeah of the new star wars stuff Andor and Skeleton Crew are both amazing in very different ways
They should make a new Skeleton Crew show every year with a whole new cast.
It really hits the lighthearted adventure button that to me is the core of Star Wars.
I'd argue they already proved this with Rogue One. Too bad we had the Abrams/Johnson dumpster fire.
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I don't think we'll see anything on the same level as Andor again; they already cut the original plans from 5 seasons to 2; it's simply too expensive and costs too much time to do it this well. But I do hope that future Star Wars shows will try to follow at least some aspects of its example: better writing, more human stories, focus on core themes, not on fan service or milking established characters.
Of course production values will be lower, but I can live with that if they get the other stuff right.
Thank god. There's not enough meat on the bone, the writing would never have been good enough to support this.
We need more excellent, tightly spun stories.
I think there was more than enough room to fill at least another season. Maybe two.
But hey, I'm more than happy we got this much.
If we didn't have them, it would turn it into a drag. A dramatic year looks much more impressive when you compare it to what was a year before, than when you look at it day by day.
He realised that everything, absolutely everything in Star Wars needs to be designed, that it took ages to do, and that it would be forever to make 5 seasons. So he pitched to Diego to only make one more.
Wow that's a shame. I had no idea. Assuming they could've kept up the quality, that would've been amazing for their reputation and retention.
From some of the interviews I saw it seemed like the time aspect was the big driver. One in particular Diego Luna was talking about a conversation he had with Gilroy and Gilroy was like "God it'd take us 10 years to make this". I get that logistically that can be a tough thing to do with actors, and also it'd be a bit odd to have Diego Luna be very noticeably older in Season 5 than he is in Rogue One.
These I think were 12 episode seasons, maybe five 8 episode seasons would have been better.
Rogue One was my favourite Star Wars production before Andor, now I wish they could throw it away and remake it as Andor Season 3. It deserves to be told in full.
More the presence of the Force and Jedi lore. They were so close to not having that be part of Rogue One but were still forced to include the mystical super beings in some way. Andor was able to fully detach from that baggage, focusing on the little people doing their part. And when they did bring in the Force healer in the second season, it was exactly how you'd expect average people to respond to a mystical power that you didn't directly witness. Hope, faith, skepticism, denial, rejection.
As far as Vader goes...it does make you wonder if he's just toying with Obi-Wan when he meets him like 3 days later...
I disagree.
If you set aside the difference in special effects capabilities, Vader is clearly being cautious in the light saber fight with Obi Wan on the Death Star. And we know that's because Obi Wan kicked his ass on Mustafar (THE KENOBI MINI SERIES NEVER HAPPENED I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT). And then Obi Wan never actually intends to fight Vader in earnest. He intends to become a force ghost all along. Still one step ahead of Anakin's understanding of the force.
- Andor running into Pigperson and Grover on Yedha
- That entirely random 20-sec scene with C-3PO and R2-D2
- "Red Leader, standing by" was archive footage from A New Hope (and arguably a tribute to the late actor)
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 …
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.
Update: Clone Wars especially benefits from finding a good best-of episode guide to help move the story along.
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.
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.
Turns out that makes for pretty good adult oriented star wars.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Shadows
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_Berlin
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_village_fran%C3%A7ais
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).
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.
You can't escape your influences, and you don't need to.
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
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.
[1] https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/TIE_Avenger
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".
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.
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.
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
I think like the Asimov books, Star Wars is best as fantasy history. The forward looking ones (that horrific “final” trilogy) are just awkward stories.
(I think the prequels were worse than the sequels but they're collectively pretty unmemorable.)
Any way you cut it, it’s really cool how people consume them in different ways, and there’s enough material that over time we can just discard garbage like 8 hours of walking through the desert.
10-20 minutes of static talking heads, 5 minutes of mediocre action. Repeat until the end. Meaningless side-quests. The final is a thousand cliches one after another culminating in a "main computer at the end of a rickety walkway" and "a kiss at the sunset".
The only reason it's hailed as the greatest movie ever is because so much of the Star Wars is just objectively shit.
They don't kiss.
And that's not a sunset.
There's nothing subversive.
> It's an ending about sacrifice that wouldn't make sense in any other context.
There are a million ways to make an ending about sacrifice. Rogue One chose the worst one, after a lot of other ridiculous choices
The other thing that has always plagued SW is the fact they can travel through hyperspace, have the tech to destroy planets, but largely lack CCTV, autopilot, effective homing missiles, HD displays, etc. It's a weird mix of 70s tech and super sci-fi.
It's like, if you were leading a rebellion, would you have your secret base rigged with remotely detonated explosives, or need to go back and cackhandedly manually destroy your comms, etc?
Suspension of disbelief is stretched to breaking point sometimes.
One point Nuyens makes in a few different ways is that they used a variety of tools and techniques at every stage. People often have simplistic, extreme viewpoints like "modern CGI can do anything" or "CGI looks fake and weightless, practical effects are better". But here's somebody with a big part in making a fantastic-looking show, who very explicitly embraces multiple approaches. Massive real sets with CGI enhancements; sometimes green screens, sometimes old-fashioned backdrop paintings, sometimes LED screens. It sounds like close collaboration between teams in different areas was key, like the VFX team working with the production designer from the start. "Some shots started VFX and then became sets."
It sounds like a big success for an artisanal approach, where every element is a bespoke construction by cross-functional experts, versus a modular approach where each team has a position in the workflow with well-defined inputs and outputs.
But maybe it's not worth the time and money, and the "worse is better" approach wins out? I hope not, or least I hope we get more shows aspiring to be as good as this.
On a smaller scale, interesting to hear how much equipment on a high-end film set is now wireless. That must be a massive change from just a few years ago, where you'd have had massive cables snaking everywhere.
They didn't have to. It's cinema quality. They could have spent less and gotten a goodly fraction of the quality. But I'm really glad they did.
Like they actually took the actors to Coruscant to shoot scenes. Felt so much more lived in than Coruscant in the prequels.
"Lived in" is absolutely right. That's something people always praised about the original movies, but that was about the smokey dive bars, messy aircraft hangars and broken-down machinery. Getting that lived-in feel for massive Imperial buildings and cities is a great new twist on it.
Shogun did this too, I think also The Witcher.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsAndor/comments/15rjjcg/why_...
This is the definition of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and they're still some of the best-looking films I've ever seen, far surpassing the modern UE slop.
That said, I do agree, they made something truly incredible that has stood the test of time. And I wish we could have more of it (but I'll also take better working conditions every day until we figure out how to have both.)
And despite how good Andor (and Rogue One fits here as well) was, I think there’s some merit to wanting to go see a film that makes you feel good. There are certain films and books I won’t put myself through (especially fiction) more than once because I don’t want something ultimately meaningless adding stress to my life. It’s supposed to be an enjoyable escape. So Andor/Rogue One come pretty close to that point for me.
In a New Hope as Luke and Ben are inspecting the damage to the Jawa transport, Ben does say "Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise." Then the stormtroopers go on the rest of the series missing everything they aim at.
> Leia: They let us go. It was the only reason for the ease of our escape.
> Han: Easy? You call that easy?
> Leia: They're tracking us.
One aspect that’s really striking when you see Andor is how little the Jedi and the Force have to do with it; which highlights how central they are to the original trilogy. (Rogue One does a pretty deft job of bridging those worlds, eg with Donnie Yen’s character.)
And the Force was a big part of the charm of the original movies, right? All the scenes with Luke and Yoda are wonderful, for example. I wouldn’t want to take that away, any more than I’d want to shoehorn the Jedi into Andor.
I think the real problem with the original movies starts with the prequels, which doubled down on all the Jedi business but managed to make it feel very pedestrian, rather than mystical.
The sequel movies could have been great if they had really tried to explore the collapse of the Empire and what the reconstruction would look like, rather than shamelessly retreading everything beat-for-beat. The Last Jedi did at least try to be different, but its ideas were completely scattershot and (I think) not very fruitful.
The less Force, the better in my opinion. Save super-powers for comic-book movies.
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In the recent Disney movies (Andor being the exception) it’s like they gave everyone the force, everyone is a super hero, it’s bombastic and annoying.
Let me run around with a rock and a stick for the first hour. Then give me a sword that looks cheap but I will cherish it. Then take it away. Let me earn it when I am awesome in the end.
To many games treat you like a toddler that wants shiny things. Yeah I want shiny things, but I want them when I deserved them. Similarily, yeah, I want powerful heros, but they have to earn it as well.
Sure, you'll be a badass at the end, but you're going to earn it. :)
If your standard for what science fiction is us The Expanse then almost all of what's considered science fiction is fantasy.
Star Wars doesn't even claim to attempt this. It is a world of entirely made up rules and places for the sake of the story. There is nothing wrong with that. But it completely misses this key feature of sci fi.
There isn't a very clear delineation between the two genres. Star Trek also crosses this line into pure fantasy pretty consistently (an anomaly that compells everybody to sing and eventually produces a Klingon boy band performance? Or one that gives everybody amnesia and turns them into actors in Shakespeare drama - costumes and all?).
I'm not saying the distinction doesn't exist - The Hobbit isn't SF and Ringworld isn't high fantasy, but I am saying that between the extremes, it's mostly just vibes. There is no objective reason not to consider Star Wars science fiction, some people just find the space wizards too silly (while having a bookshelf full of "The author's barely disguised fetish or hyperfixation but In Spaaaaace.")
I wasn't in both cases, communists considered it a capitalist propaganda about US might and banned it (maybe just heard about Star wars being US space program, took just first result on soviet gugel so to speak, but fight for freedom at all costs is generally not something you want to encourage in dictatorship).
They are an interesting flick (original trilogy), but nothing really magical for me in them. As mentioned by others they feel like 80s pop sci fi movie, nothing more, characters and acting are... mediocre and it all feels aimed at kids/teens. A lot of creativity with sets, but that's not primary reason for me to watch a movie.
Since I refuse (can't even) to be swayed emotionally of some good ol' memories from growing up, prequels felt even more childish (maybe apart from ep3), and this trend continued with last 3 movies. Rogue one was by far the best experience in whole SW universe, so if this goes even further happy to experience it.
That is to say, a sci-fi setting. Andor would not be correctly put in the sci-fi genre, rather in the political thriller genre.
I guess in short, I'm saying that you really don't have to be open to the sci fi genre to enjoy Andor.
And once you have relatable psychology you also get politics and weaponization of information (what the show was mostly about) - political thriller. Agree, those elements were damn good ones. And I loved the utilization of WW 2 analogues - French resistance, Spanish civil war, Wansee conference etc etc
I would say the show was very _grounded_ in that the high stakes were about humans doing human things.
What sets Andor apart is _excellence_ and (partly budget driven) restraint.
Not only was the acting superb, the script was intelligent.
But then the attention to visual detail was next level as well. The sets and costumes were mind blowingly good. For example I was convinced they had to had found some real life location for the Ghorman plaza (nope, built set + CGI). I would love to have a plaza like that. Not many shows have so good fictional architecture you would love to see the real thing.
So I was totally impressed with the show. But in my books it’s still sci-fi. It’s probably the best recent serialized sci-fi show in the last decade along with the Expanse.
If I’m reading between the lines what you are saying is that ”Andor is actually intelligent and high quality art … sci-fi can’t be high quality art”? I’m exaggerating to make a point.
Nope not at all, for example I personally would put the Expanse firmly in the genre of sci-fi. The major themes it explores centre around its setting; it doesn't happen to exist in a futuristic space setting; the entire show would cease to function as a concept without it. Major plot lines exist specifically to explore the "what-ifs" of that fictional future. And honestly, while I acknowledge it's intelligent and extremely well loved by its fans, it's one that I'd have trouble recommending to people that aren't big into sci fi, for that reason.
But compare that to something like Firefly, where's it's basically a heist/western that happens to be set in outer space.
The Force though... yeah, as much as I'm a big fan of SW, the whole concept leans way too hard into soft magic territory, at least to my taste.
Even in ESB, Han Solo uses it to cut open the ton ton
No, Finn used it fine in defense when fighting a trooper in TFA. It is useful even without the Force. We can only blame sequels for that :P
Although yeah, when compared to other weapons at the time, they seem overpowered, I agree, never thought of that.
They have some of it too. But it's a very well crafted scene showing how normal people would react to the force weirdos.
As a physical media guy, I'm happy that Disney decided to release season 1 on 4k UHD. And I hope to buy season 2 when it hits the shelves.
(I think that's in Lost Worlds of 2001, which is a fun read)
Or else.
Directors shooting something for streaming: please watch your show on a laptop or cheaper TV in a realistic bedroom or living room setting (with daylight leaking in or with some lights turned on). We don’t all have reference grade monitors and a pitch black studio. In fact, most consumers don’t have those things. If you really want to keep the cinematic purity, could you at least make a “normie edit” that pumps up the brightness?
I’d rather they preserve the dynamic range than succumb to the loudness war.
Whole time I thought there was really no point watching on an OLED or in HDR cause it's not taking advantage of either.
You can even see it on the photos in the article. The BTS photographs have contrast and blacks while the stills from the show are muted and gray.
The whole series basically looked like it was trying to recreate the "Shot on Google Pixel" look and completely opposite of HBO's black on black on black.
a lot of video players don't get it right consistently codec-to-codec, even the gold standard FOSS classics (VLC, MPV) and wrappers like iina on mac.
i typically use iina and vlc as fallback, but wasn't able to get either to play correctly, even though they're fine players for some other examples. i wound up subbing to disney plus for a month to watch it properly.
if you're viewing MKVs of unknown provenance, use an HDR version to ensure it's not a bad encode. if you're not viewing on an HDR display, double-check that tone mapping is enabled and configured correctly.
I wish the crew behind it would be allowed to continue the story until the fall of the emperor, so we could get the whole "rise and fall of the empire" story told with the same quality, depth and overall "tone" for lack of a better word.
Three more seasons taking place during the same time as the original trilogy would be nice, but of course keeping the Skywalker and Jedi stuff mostly in the background.
A similar show as Andor with storylines taking place on Alderaan and the construction site of the death star, say.
Doesn't sound very relatable for today's audiences.
But most importantly, I think Andor is less strong without the original movies. The looming threat and the Mothma high-society scenes become a lot less powerful. Same for the insights into the Imperial machine. And even the meaning of the Rebellion itself. I'd argue while technically great, well written etc. without the SW backdrop the storytelling suffers quite a bit.
I have friends that I can't convince to watch it because they are just too done with that universe in general.
But that's the thing, Andor could be outside of StarWars and just its own thing because the world building that it does on its own is excellent, the premise (empire vs rebellion/revolutionaries) is mostly intemporal.
WARNING, SPOILERS
The story is not properly resolved. If you have no SW knowledge, the threat isn't even very clear. Some galaxy government lead by an emperor is building a weapon, shown once. If S2 is the end it's pretty unsatisfying in general. The politics are kind of unclear.
The sacrifice of Mothma is very unclear without a SW background. A senator said something and had to flee to a planet (oversimplified).
Without knowledge of R1, the killing machine super droid is down right comical/a sloppy resolve for things.
Without SW knowledge the (imo) best part of the Imperial machinery, bureaucracy, power hunger also becomes awkward at times and frankly less interesting. Syril is my favorite character and Dedra probably second. I found their arcs great, every single non-SW viewer I talked to found them "boring", "that guy with the annoying mother was strange" and "why did they have to be a couple, that's pretty unimaginative writing" etc.
END SPOILERS
My personal quibbles are that the crashed tie episode was pretty bad filler. I have not heard anyone say anything good about it.
Someone else already mentioned minor technical problems (field scene).
I found Diego Luna's acting ok but not great. It felt wooden at times. To some extend that's subjective but it doesn't compare to the lead acting I have in my personal top tier (Breaking Bad for example)
I absolutely loved it. So much that I'm now watching the entirety of Star Wars film and TV in chronological order (I'm in the Clone Wars series now, before the timeline overlaps Revenge of the Sith, and I went out of sequence to watch Rogue One to see the conclusion of the cast from Andor). The full chronology can be found here[1], though I used a bit of JS to extract just the films, tv shows, and video specials as a markdown table to put in Obsidian
So as someone who can say I pretty much didn't have the context you claim is necessary to appreciate Andor, I can tell you that it 100% stands out as a masterpiece to people who are unfamiliar with the rest of the Star Wars lore.
[1]: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_of_canon_media
I get that it felt like a bit of a diversion from the main story, but thematically the show is largely about the less palatable realities of being part of a resistance movement. That episode is about the reality that you'll probably end up getting waylaid by squabbling idiots along the way. I think it earns its place in the show.
The Force part was hamfisted. It was clear that they were trying to avoid "midochlorians" but didn't know how it handle it, and didn't spend any time to develop it organically. It felt more like highbrow fanservice connecting Cassian to Luke. It's similar to the Kleya hospital/flashback episode, which could well have been its own 3 episode arc and gotten time to breathe like the S1 prison arc. Since they cut the project down to be 4 3-episode mini seasons after S1, instead of 6+ episodes each, they rushed some story arcs and sublots that end up just being presented as bullet points.
"Think about a planet like Ghorman in rebellion. A planet of wealth and status."
"And if it goes up in flames?"
"It will burn... very brightly."
There's barely any recent popular TV or movies I can think of with the level of subtle, complex, morally grey themes Andor explored.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAJ3dUm_r2A
I'm quite sure that they were empty on ideas in terms of scenario, so they tried to spread the longest possible what would have fitted in a single movie of 2 hours.
I think that also explains why they didn't manage to do more than 2 seasons when their original goal was 5.
1) the themes it explores. Things like fighting fascism has been done to death by this point, half of YA is "goverment military and bad, young girl gets a love triangle and defats them". Andor shows the slowing, encroching effect of military rule. What a prision industrial complex looks like (from fake incarcerations to unescapable sentences). What colonialism looks like (bleak pragmatic bureocracy about mineral extraction while discussing genocide over hors d'oeuvres). How political silencing happens (mothma cannot find allies because they all understand they have very limited political capital and have to be very careful were they spend it). Those are serious topics, and you basically do not see them outside of shows which care on systems like Wire on the drug police system, or House of card with the political congress system. Certainly not on star wars
2) Cinematography. The show is shot like a spy thriller from the get go. It makes sense with Gilroy previous Bourne experience but for a disney property opening up with killing 2 cops outside a brothel sets a tone not seen previously. Thats carried with every arc having instantly recognisable look and feel, from the cold harsh lights of Narkina 5, to the warm beach vibes of Niamos (space miami), the future vibe of corusant or the jungle vibe of Yanvin 4.
3) Monologues. Most shows cant pull off one monologue without it looking awful, this show manages plenty of them, sometimes in the same episode.
4) The topics its willing to address. I mentioned themes before, but those themes can be explored in many ways. Prequels dealt with growing fascism in the republic then turned empire, but it wouldnt say genocide or have a isb officer talk about how annoying it is the army wants their interrogation techniques because their torture works so well. Or show insignificant middle managers so untouchable they attempt to rap* a main character. Saying the empire is very powerful and scary is one thing, showing how they behave with that power is way more chilling.
5) The carnival of interesting people explored. Most shows have a few main characters and then supporting characters whose mission is to not have a personality and be a plot device of some kind. Here outside of the incredible inner life of even minor characters you get to see the journey of peopel as varied as Andor, a colonial genocide survivor who was a petty thief and became a high ranking member of the rebellion. Luthen, an ex empire soldier who after crumbling on a mission rescues Kleya and becomes one of the leaders of the rebellion from within Corusant, sort of batman/bruce wayne. Vel, a nepo baby from Chandrilla who joins the rebellion. Syril, a dadless little shit who is obssesed with following the rules thinking he would get far inside the empire system. Dedra, an orphan that cares so much about results she might be actually responsible for the fall of the empire. Kleya, another genocide survivor, taken in by Luthen and basically nightwing to his batman. Like whether you like womanly women, or tomboy super killers and whether you like manly rebels who dont follow the rules to super organised overachiever you can find a character with an entire arc in andor for you.
I could keep going but honestly its just a great show. From ideas like making 3 episode arcs, to how well it ties into Rogue one I think there is so much to praise there
For someone who hadn’t watched the show, the article is a pain to read. The images are thrown in randomly, there is no relationship between the text and the images. Every images is pointlessly labelled “Cinematography of “Andor” by Christophe Nuyens”. The interview seems to have covered things in detail, like going into specific scenes and sets, and lens.. etc., but the accompanying images are utterly useless in showing any of that to the reader.
I gave up after a while.
Most likely promotional shots. They used them as examples of the work, and as stills they hold up. I thought the article cromulent.
I can understand it might be difficult to understand the context of some set descriptions without having seen the show but I think that would also be true with relevant still images as you'd still lack character & narrative context.
Honestly can't see how they could've formatted the article any better than they did. Seems fine.
I'm sure it's a combination of techniques (locations, Volume, CGI, green screen, etc), because that's what keeps your eye guessing. But I'm continually blown away by how expansive it is in both the foreground and background (and moving between the two).
My two favorite shows ever are Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (w/ Alec Guinness), The Wire, The Simpsons seasons 1-8.
Second season is great, but I still appreciate first more. S01E09 has one of the best space battles I ever saw in sci-fi. Ever.
I suppose there's more good examples that could be mined from the show.
Ties in well with Andor as the book discusses, realistically, how the rot set in with the Republic. How it could be transformed into the Empire with little initial protest. How the Empire sustained itself via a mix of military control, propaganda, and moving towards making the population feel helpless and thus apolitical. And how the blind sides of a rigid, fascist system led to the Rebellion winning despite the huge power disparity.
It's the perfect companion book for the series. And is a good introductory book on how authoritarianism takes hold, how the insurgents can exploit weaknesses, and what should be done, post-rebellion, to keep the fascists from returning. I think many people, who otherwise would not be obsessive about Star Wars lore, would find it interesting.
On a side note: the book does address the events of Abrams sequel trilogy with an interesting angle. That the New Republic essentially didn't do enough de-Nazification and that led to their downfall. This approach to those terrible movies doesn't entirely succeed, but does make them a little more interesting. And matches what we've seen in real life reconstructions after the downfall of various regimes.
But, the reason it probably did so well was they let people like Christophe just make something cool instead of overly commercial.
I'd love to see VCs start funding film production like they fund video games. Maybe then we'd have a genuinely new film the quality of Andor, that was as popular as the original Star Wars instead of another thing inside of Star Wars.
Something genuinely new, there's only been remakes recently.
I just want a new universe to geek out on.
I’ve been there. Too much tech and compatibility among them is a major source of frustration. For a movie tech guys I see that as opportunity to come up with an OS where everything can be integrated where all stakeholders being users and multiple technologies working together with cohesion
Not to mention I don't even put Andor in the category of a typical Star Wars story. It's just great geopolitical writing. The boardroom scenes were some of my favorites of any show I've ever watched.
Spoilers:
People seem to gush over Maarva's hologram speech, I thought it was pretty weak (it started good then it was fumbled).
Maarva's act of rebellion should have been killing herself to deliver her speech at the right time. She's old and sickly, so it'd add gravitas and cost effectively nothing. Then she should have said that she'd resisted all her life, but killing herself was her first act of rebellion. Then the bomb that gets thrown into the Empire ranks should have been baked into her brick, giving her the chance to fight posthumously.
They had nearly all the plot points set up so nicely for the slam dunk, I was perplexed when it ended so dryly.
Denise Gough and Elizabeth Dulau are particularly good.
(albeit every single other performance in the massive ensemble cast was also excellent)
For reference, Rings of Power, Jupiter's Legacy and Citadel (US version) cost about twice as much per episode on Amazon, and Game of Thrones on HBO started at five to six million per episode and went up to 15 million by the final season.
They're not making a movie; the entire series is a prequel to the 2016 movie Rogue One.
In any case, i would be careful with such absolute statements
It is logical enough to conclude that a story ending in two intelligence agents flying off for a time-sensitive meeting with a confidential informant, is an immediate prequel to the story that begins with the same two intelligence agents landing and meeting that confidential informant.
This is not quite the same situation as the end of Rogue One and A New Hope, where some people make the argument that Rogue One ends just a few minutes before ANH begins; I am not convinced by that argument, although the cinematography certain seems to be leading us there.
The ending scene of RO is the data handoff and narrow escape of the Tantive IV with Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO on it.
How is that not a direct continuity into the opening scene of A New Hope?
I think you might've fallen for some of the jokes about it being a prequel.
They really take their time filming this kinda stuff so don't hold your breath.
There indeed is absolutely no planned sequel to or continuation of Andor, nor currently any known plans for the creator of it to create anything else in this franchise. I'd sure like it if he did, though.
No. A masterpiece would not have any fluff. There are all number of scenes/characters that could be cut from Andor without any real impact. Entire scenes and characters could be dropped without impacting the narrative. (The entire forest planet sequence imho.)
Andor is a product of the "for your consideration" form of review made popular by the Academy (oscars). Each scene is excellent. Each scene is a cinematic tour de force. But they are all independent scenes. Rearrange the order, shuffle the scene deck, and little changes as the scenes are not dependent on each other. The overall narrative is thin. That may make for good/popular television but it is not deserving of "masterpiece".
I also think "masterpiece" is a heavy term to throw around but the emotional impact of the this series and the complexity of its narrative as it catalogs a hero's journey from reluctant participant to true believer with an epic story arc can be held up next to most film and historical epics like Laurence of Arabia, Ben Hur, The Matrix, the Original Star Wars trilogy, Dune, Kingdom of Heaven, Gladiator, The Handmaid's Tale (series), The Odyssey (epic poem). His personal journey which leads to his persecution and enslavement, his role in leading a slave uprising, rescuing his friends from the aftermath of a rebel uprising, building the foundations of a rebel army, risking his life countless times and ultimately sacrificing himself to prevent his enemy from having an insurmountable edge.
The series makes the very popular "Avengers" film series look like trite dogshit and does the same for most of the "Star Wars" sequels and prequels so I don't fault people for using the term "masterpiece".
Was your gripe about superfluous scenes, where you mentioned the forest planet, a reference to the first few episodes of season 2? That forest plant is Yavin IV, the plant where the rebels eventually build their first base, and those rebels are some of the first recruits to the rebel army. I believe those scenes were intended to show how the rebellion lacked leadership and how Andor and others had to step up to provide that leadership.
I would say that there is not a single scene that can be removed from these movies without negatively impacting the story/theme/narrative.
Some say that Star Wars IV and V fit this definition but I would say there is some eyecandy fluff that could be cut.
Appropriating Saint Exupéryian (et al.) notions regarding the unattainable (perfection) to judge an artwork is a sucker's bet to me.
And in the cited works I rate as cinematic masterpieces scene editing (e. g. removal) is most certainly possible without having a negative impact on your criteria, but that is a completely moot point anyways.
With regards to Andor's forest arc: It is, amongst other things that are most certainly more appreciated by a specific set of people, a very interesting mediation on time and the notion "where there's competence, there's always also incompetence", often manifesting in very comical and surreal ways.
However, I had previously watched a few eps of S1, and everything was fine and very well made.. but I just didnt care about anything that was going on, so I stopped.
Just wondering did anyone else feel the same about S1 and then get blown away by S2?
S2 has great, great acting and characters along-with good pacing since they apparently jammed in at-least 2 seasons into a single season. It starts out strong too.
S2 shows the larger republic and it's politics and factions. This gives you a broader galactic context of what's going on. This enamored me and got me to go back and re-watch the first 6 movies. I originally watched them as a teen and was lost at the time. Really started to appreciate the setting and story now.
I need to go back and watch the remainder of S1 though since they say it gets better later.
No. This is why everything is so dark. With film, cinematographers had to hedge their bets. They could not risk a scene being too dark, something they would not be sure of until the film was developed. Today, digital tech means they can see the results live on monitor screens. So they can cut the lights and make everything super dark without worry. Forget "natural". There is nothing natural about watching a screen in the dark where your eyes cannot properly adjust as they would in the real world. Also, I want to watch TV in my kitchen without having to douse every light in the house.
LCD screens can't do true black. Film, CRT, and OLED can.
The darkness problem is also quite annoying, though varies a lot by show. I just started watching Silo, and while I understand most scenes are supposed to take place in a pretty dark environment (inside of a silo), everything is just so dark in almost all scenes.
Watching on my 7.1 setup was actually more annoying than watching on my computer with 2.0. There's a very obvious bass-boost as if they assumed there isn't subwoofer in the setup, and dialog didn't get any clearer with a dedicated center, it was still kinda floaty across the front. Surround channels just sounded like they echo'd the L/R channels.
So yeah, not seeing shit can be natural. Whether it is good for the narration or 100% of your viewers like it is a different can of worms. Let's only say that the cinematographers thought making the viewer have to concentrate on what is going on at that point was benefitial.
The "natural" part about shooting digitally is that you can go outside and use a camera in dusk and the picture isn't all black or incredibly grainy as it was back when you shot at film. And that's about it. In digital you can shoot with available light only in more situations than before. In the end cameras perceive light situations different than the human eye so it is still the task of the cinematographer to do that translation.
Sarcasm aside, there is something to be said about industries that let professionals do their work, and everyone is doing their bit towards a clearly defined shared goal. Considering the IT industry has taken so much ideas from industrial production, it wouldn't hurt to take some from artistic production too. After all, both are work concerned with refining blueprints where the final draft ends up being the product.
All the things you're describing -- in the spirit of tickets, sprints, etc. -- do happen. They're called pre-production. It takes years (months if you're lucky) to set up how everything will run on set. Producers have a huge list of actionables (tickets), and there is constant iteration (sprints) of parts of the script, of what the film's visual look will be, the tone, figuring out the budget, the crew, etc. And there are huge differences in responsibility between producer and director. A producer doesn't "run around speaking in precise terms" when that would step on the feet of the director, the cinematographer, etc. That would be micromanaging and unprofessional. The producer does very much stick to "user stories". When film crews want to change something, they don't "just do it". They very much do check in with the director or showrunner.
I suspect you're talking about execution, where everyone does "just do" things. When filming, every minute counts and shit needs to get done. Yes, every single person is tremendously empowered to do what's right, within their remit. But that only works because preproduction already worked out most of the kinks, and they should all basically be on the same page. But even then, things constantly go south. Shots take hours to set up and then turn out to be wrong for an infinite number of reasons. There are endless compromises. And during that process, only one person is in charge -- the director -- because they have to make a ton of decisions to compensate for all the things going wrong. So it's teamwork... but it's also a dictatorship and once the director makes a decision after collecting the input they want you do not argue.
You seem to be under the impression that film production is somehow more individually empowering or trusting than software development. It's not.
Also, unlike software engineering, the film industry has been around for 100+ years. They've figured stuff out.
(We could say software engineering has been around for 50+ years, but I think that in its modern form it's probably more like 20 years. Highly subjective statement, I know.)
Jira in four words.
> Kirill: How much time did you have in pre-production to talk about ideas, visuals and inspirations?
> Christophe: We had a lot of time, and it’s a rare thing. The director Ariel Kleiman and I went through the same process for each episode. We were reading the scripts together, and throwing ideas and brainstorming. We did that twice for each episode, and then we started making moodboards. After that we did another read through, and then we started blocking the scenes. We had a lot of 3D pre-viz with ILM, with our camera and lenses in those virtual sets. That allowed us to start looking for shots and to refine everything.
It's sad that tens of thousands of kids attend film school, yet there are too few roles of autonomy for them.
The "Hollywood" system only makes a few thousand film and tv productions of scale per year. There are way more people with visions and ideas and dreams, and they're all left to wither on the vine.
How many Chris Nolans, Stanley Kubricks, and Ridley Scotts have we lost to the rat race?
I think this is the biggest potential for AI. Suddenly all of those directors and dreamers who couldn't { hack, struggle, nepo } their way to the top of the pyramid can pursue their vision.
YouTube and TikTok have been huge enablers of creativity. They're a much fairer and wider platform for enablement and distribution, and already today's youth are setting this target as their new generational dream.
We're likely about to see a film industry that resembles the gaming, publishing, and music industries. Studios will exist for large scale "AAA" fare, but individual auteurs and small teams will be able to make their mark. Steam Greenlight, Bandcamp, Wattpad, and Medium for the director. It's like what the DAW did for music production - no more need to spend tens of thousands to book a studio - except even more orders of magnitude in cost reduction.
We've needed studios for two things historically: (1) distribution (2) financing. YouTube and streaming solved #1, and Gen AI puts film [1] squarely within the "ramen budget" of college students. So pillar #2 is about to fall.
[1] I don't mean low budget films. Gen AI will give directors the VFX to achieve expansive science fiction and fantasy visions, exotic locales, and a stunningly beautiful cast (that most audiences prefer to watch).
When you ship a piece of software, it's often expected to be usable by a million people reliably for years.
In film and video production, you're duct taping shit together to get it to stay in one piece just long enough to get the shot and get the film out the door. You're fixing shit in post because you were in a hurry on set. It's a sort of barely controlled chaos.
Game development is somewhere between the two.
Is this really true anymore? I feel like people release software now expecting to continue to patch it repeatedly, so there isn't a push to get it perfect the first time.
Curiously I think this shares a lot with other types of engineering. If you're putting men on the moon, you have to get everything right a single time.
Given the way things are, whole movies are going to be made in post...
Honestly it's almost more notable these days when that kind of stuff doesn't happen.
You're basically paying more money to decouple and delay decisions as much as possible.
Though, nit pick -- when people say "fix it in post", they're not usually talking about editing.
Editing is an expected, normal, traditional part of the art of filmmaking. You're not changing or fixing the shots themselves; you are cutting and pasting footage sequentially to tell a coherent and compelling story. The YT you linked is a masterful example of how Star Wars was saved through this sort of editing.
"Fix it in post" refers more to making sloppy shots full of errors and then correcting those errors later with CGI.
Does that make sense? The art of stitching shots together, versus shooting crappy shots and CGIing them later.
They do multiple, sometimes dozens, of takes for most shots.
That said, directors shoot v differently - some will do literal hundreds of takes and still do plenty of post, others will shoot max three takes and send to edit.
Music, film, and text are static. Software is dynamic.
However, the fact that software can readily embrace dynamism, can make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
But back when games were shipped on CD or burned into ROM cartridges, it was much more of a ship it and it’s DONE process and culture.
What I meant is that software is interactive, while a video, for example, is not, it's static in the sense that it will always played in the same way.
And what specifically, comparatively, has modern corporate software production organization contributed to to this point?
Have you ever watched a "bad" movie? There is your answer :)
Software can be like this, e.g. if you were building a small team to do something you cared about it would probably be more like a 3* kitchen than support team inside IBM or something.
Of course there are also Executive producers who are far far up the financial food chain of a movie, and sometimes these titles are also just vanity plates for the production.
As an example of the value of a good/great producer, look at Gary Kurtz. He was essential for both Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but wasn't part of the team for Return of the Jedi. In my opinion, that's one of the reasons that ROTJ is the worst of the three films. Lucas didn't have someone pushing back against his worse tendencies.
For an example of the wrong director, look no further than Rogue One. While it's very difficult to sus out what was wrong with Gareth Edwards directing, Tony Gilroy was brought in to fix the film. Both are appropriately quiet about what the changes were, what was re-shot (simple professional courtesy), but the result is a film that (while I love it) is just slightly off.
Film production at this level have a lot of process. There are many teams and the director or showrunner acts as “product owner”. The crew is very hierachical and specialized with clearly defined turfs. Pre-production is iterative but when shooting starts it is waterfall - it is incredibly expensive to make small changes after shooting have started. Digital has made it somewhat more iterative since you can “fix it in post” but this still has its limits. You can remove a beard and add a spaceship but you cannot fix bad acting or bad lines.
Film production is definitely not just letting the creatives run wild. Any idea has a price tag attached and will ultimately have to be approved by the accounting team. And film production tend to have a hard deadline and no possibility of patch updated.
Software development is a lot easier since you can keep developing iteratively.
This is how software development compares to other fields: https://xkcd.com/2030/
Software development really has gone off the deep end. In any other field, people actually document what they do, and verify that it works, before releasing anything. Restaurants have recipes and food handling requirements, manufacturers have tolerances and verification, architects have building code, warehouses have inventory management, and so on and so forth. Because non-software development relies on products that actually work, and are not built around the meta game of abusing arbitrary metrics, workers can rely on other departments to make sensible choices.
Fun fact: Waterfall development never existed; it's a straw man argument against the common sense idea of finishing what your working on, before starting something new.
AI is going to pop the bubble of software development, not because it's good at it, but because because the entire field is too broken to compete against it.
Found the Amazonian. It’s amazing how the corporate jargon seeps in, no matter how hard you try :). In some ways, deciding to work there is definitely a one way door.
But a lot of movies are terrible because this doesn’t happen.
The truth about the world is that it’s poorly managed, and competent people don’t always rise to the top of complex organisations.
1 person teams?
[1] https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoPizzaTeam.html
Not the least of which, if you screw up a release in your software engineering career, you’ll probably get many chances to correct and have a fine if not better career later in. Fuck up a release almost any time in your film career and you may never work again.
Rather than "hey I just wanted to add one word and they pushed back"
While most things in entertainment do not pass the first test. There are plenty of examples that absolutely pass all of the others.
I only say most because there are numerous circumstances where in the entertainment industries where maybe not always the final product but definitely during production where lives are on the line.
I have a problem with defining things as critical or not because you have no idea what your products or solutions may end up being used for. If things are being used by people in a production capacity and the collective stake of the success or failure of the endeavor rests upon the tools and solutions performing as designed then one could argue these are critical. But to whom? When designers don't see their solutions as critical it breeds laziness and pushes the responsibility for auditing onto the user who most likely doesn't even know to audit because they were sold a solution and made the mistake of taking a vendors word. Which maybe we should all be tearing down all of our electronics and reverse engineering all of our software so that we can have some semblance of functionality… And I know plenty of studios which do just this down to tearing down and making all and I do mean all of their cables because for them one stray bit of interference is critical. Why are they in this position? Because nothing and no one in tech or any other industry can be trusted. And when your career and reputation, and livelihood is on the line then everything starts to look critical. Maybe its only the livelihood of one? But to them its critical.
1. Life 1. House 2. Salary 3. Reputation 4. Physical or mental health 5. Time
> definitely during production where lives are on the line
You can say that for any company - if they wired electricity in a bad way on my job, lives can be lost.
> because you have no idea what your products or solutions may end up being used for
Many products are used exactly for 1 thing. For example, online banking. You don't use it to for dating, although you theoretically can if you really want to
> But to whom?
Only end users.
Software is different because digital systems are messes of rigid causality. If reality were like software moving a table could trigger the elevator to stop working and birds to fly upside down by breaking DNS by way of a change in server load triggering Kubernetes to get into a weird state where it kills and restarts DNS too fast to allow it to properly initialize and serve requests, but only when it is raining in Bangalore, India on a Tuesday.
The other nice thing about reality is reusability. A table used in one movie set could be used in a different movie without rebuilding the table.
There has been a ton of work on good system design to avoid this, like well done (not enterprise Java) OOP, and we were getting there until the web and cloud hit and we decided to trash all that and go back to piles of slop on Unix servers. Still wouldn’t have been as inherently causally ordered as physics but it might have been nicer.
"How do I light and shoot this green screen?"
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I disagree with the sentiment that Andor goes beyond the original trilogy. The world building in the originals is incredible.
He also describes in detail how modern technologies, such as LED screens and painted backgrounds, allow you to achieve more natural light and visual depths, especially in scenes with restrictions related to the use of a green screen. His approach to creating a unique visual style for each block of episodes inspired by various geographical and cultural references demonstrates a high level of artistic skill and attention to details.
His thoughts on the importance of human interaction on the set and about how the pandemic Covid-19 influenced these aspects of the work sound especially touching. His desire for constant training, adaptation and cooperation with various cultures and teams emphasizes his devotion to the art of cinematography.
In general, an interview with Nuins is not only a story about the technical aspects of filming, but also an inspiring story about passion, perseverance and love for their work. His experience and approach are an excellent example for everyone who strives for perfection in the field of visual narrative.