French planet? Sounds basé.

It’s cool they’re really sexy.

The Twi’lek planet, Ryloth, is the French planet

Do the think they’re better than France? Or just better than the rest Canada, and American tourists?

And they would be correct at that.

It’s worth a watch. Probably best to smoke a joint first, it’s not exactly a thinker. But it’s a fun movie, and a lot of Star Wars seems to be lacking in fun lately. But be prepared for the cringe in one particular scene.

Pretty much.

I’m not sure I fully agree there. I think it’s absolutely accurate to say that Andor didn’t need to be Star Wars. Like, you absolutely could file all the serial numbers off and get a show that works in more or less exactly the same way.

With that said, I think Andor absolutely benefits from being Star Wars, in a couple of a ways.

The first is that they can skip all the broad strokes world building. We don’t need the concept of the galactic empire explained to us, or the general structure of how the senate works, and so on. The big pieces are all in place, so they can get straight to the small scale world building instead. This would be a solvable problem if you were creating something new, but its definitely nice that they get to skip straight to the important bits this way.

The second, bigger benefit (IMO) is the juxtaposition created by the tonal shift. Something that’s very notable about Star Wars is that the tone and the content are often rather at odds with each other. George Lucas is on record as saying that in his mind the Rebellion were the Viet-Cong (with the obvious implication that the Empire is the USA). That’s some fucking heavy shit. Luke’s adoptive parents get brutally murdered by agents of the state, for absolutely no crime at all, and this inspires him to take up with a group of, well, terrorists. I mean, this is literally the same as a young Palestinian joining up with Hamas. Star Wars is about some really, really heavy shit, but it also starts with the line “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” This is a fairy-tale about magic space wizards, but also a story about insurgents blowing up a massive military installation, and eventually performing a coup and assassinating the head of state.

Over the years, the story around Star Wars has leaned increasingly into the “magic space wizards” side of things. It’s seen as a family friendly property, something for kids to enjoy at Disneyland. The creators of Andor set out to intentionally shock the audience by creating something that leans hard away from that family friendly image. Andor is a fucking dark story, about desperate people adopting brutal methods in the face of brutal oppression.

And they’re not just doing that for shock value. The point of this is to tell a story about the ways in which we idealise “rebels” in one breath and condemn “terrorists” in another. To many people, Luke is a hero, but that young man who joins up with Hamas is a monster. Reality is complicated and messy. Hamas are a real political group, with a real ideology, and despite the monstrous oppression they face, some of that ideology really sucks. Their targets aren’t “Storm Troopers”, they’re often civilians, or conscripts. On the other hand, many of those conscripts behave in ways far more monstrous than anything the empire is ever depicted as doing.

Andor is a story about fascism, about the absolute necessity of resisting it, and about the monstrous personal cost that resistance can demand of us. By setting that story against the backdrop of a “family friendly” property I think it really does a lot to drive home the disconnect between our ideals of resistance and the cold, hard reality.

It’s fucking jarring when the ISB name drop Palpatine. You completely forget it’s star wars at some points

anti-fascist freedom fighter story

I mean that’s arguably what Star Wars is.

The Prequels and Sequels each flubbed it in their own way by being either too meandering or too self-obsessed, but Andor is basically a forceless movie trilogy broken into episodes.

I can’t understand why people think it was original. It felt like the storylines from ESB and RoTJ were thrown into a blender.

Like when the they go with Benicio del Toro I initially thought “well he’s going to betray them like Lando did”. But then I thought “nah… that’s too obvious” But nope, it didn’t do anything new other than removing the point of Lando’s plotline.

When Kylo Ren kill Snoke, it was just like Vader killing the Emperor.

I guess it’s original because it’s the only Star Wars movie where Luke Skywalker dies? Even then he faded away like Obi Wan did, but I guess because it’s Luke Skywalker it’s different somehow? Maybe because he cast an illusion spell before it happened? Like what’s actually original in TLJ?

Then I don’t understand. 8 developed Poe further by exploring the character arc for the daring overconfident pilot. Finn was given a reason to fight for the rebellion instead of trying to run away with Rey every 5 minutes. We got some absolutely great character development with Rey having a natural inclination to the dark side which builds on the fact she used the dark side to defeat Kylo in 7, and we use her as a lens to explore the “born special” trope in Star Wars, getting into more of her past history and getting satisfying answers.

Luke using an illusion to save the rebellion was the best ending to the arc they established. He spends the whole movie angry that everyone is mythologising him and expecting him to be perfect. Then he uses his myth to trick the bad guys. If he’d showed up in person, he would have been giving in to the pressure to be this mythical figure. His arc would have been accepting that everyone who thinks Luke Skywalker is perfect is right. But instead, he uses the myth for shenanigans, which is a very much Luke-like thing to do.

This is the optimal solution.

Except 9 isn’t “so bad it’s good,” it’s just bad. I would not recommend anyone watch episodes 7-9 at all.

9 is a flaming piece of shit on every level. I think its even insulting to call it a movie given how fucking shit it is.

How can you say that 9 is better than 8 because 8 destoryed stuff (what exactly?) Meanwhile 9 literally destroys the whole OT and PT story arc of Anakin/Vader

Yeah maybe I’m just bitter because they advertised TLJ as “being about strong women” and it made me think we were going to see Leia do some bad ass shit with a light saber. I was so down for that. Instead she Mary Poppinsed her way across the screen and was in a coma for most of the movie.

Having older people do action is always a challenge, check the scene where Liam Neeson is climbing over a fence and there’s like 20 cuts before he makes it. But Star Wars is the kind of thing where that isn’t much of an issue. Carrie Fisher could wave around a s stick and throw out her hand and with some CGI she’s be deflecting blaster shots and throwing around Stormtroopers using the force.

Instead we don’t see Leia with a lightsaber until RoS and it’s CGI. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate them finally showing Leia with a lightsaber. I will always defend RoS because of this… and Palpatine blasting X-Wings with lightning bolts, because fuck it, it’s Star Wars have some fun people.

Ok, we have so, so much established canon to work with, what parts of it can we focus on or interweave and tweak a bit to tell precisely the kind if story we want?

Yeah but you gotta consider what Star Wars is about at it’s core: some kids going on an adventure to save the galaxy. A lot of the EU wouldn’t work because the actors that portray the characters are too old to do those stories in the same way. Still they should’ve had Leia with a lightsaber and bring in Thrawn, who could have some younger underlings himself. And yeah Mara Jade could make an appearance too, but it wouldn’t be a starring role. But at least have the older characters doing things to help and maybe have the good old “I’ll deal with this” thing happen so the kids can get away.

TFA was the best of the three because Han Solo did stuff. Luke and Leia just didn’t feel all that relevant in the other movies. I give RoS a pass because Luke Skywalker was dead in the story and Carrie Fisher was dead in real life. Not much could be done at that point. TLJ was where things needed to go down, but it just didn’t.

You have silly robots bantering with each other while you have scenes in the first Star Wars movie where 2 eldery people are completely charred to the death or an entire planet obliterated but in both cases, as in the prequels, the real violence is not shown. The whole debate about the target audience is ridiculous, Batman The Dark Knight is PG13, there’s a lot of problems in the prequels to die on that hill.

Also “I have the high ground” is one of the dumbest things in any movie.

That’s a more valid point.

Edit: I completely forgot about Ewoks winning against the empire while you have a slavery scene with Jabba in episode 6.

I disagree on this point. Say what you will about midichlorians, but even before they were introduced, not everyone could use the force.

Granted that wasn’t explicitly stated in A New Hope… that random farm boy was already special because he was the son of a great Jedi Knight.

I like how Star Wars is confusing in this way. It’s fun.

They didn’t say you weren’t allowed to like them.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. That’s an interesting position. I never found the light sabers or blaster bolts in the original trilogy to look that bad. And the practical effects, models, and sets, certainly look superior to the CGI sets in the prequels.

If George had waited another 5 or 10 years it could have been better.

I’m not so sure about this. I think that the limitations George had at the time ended up being part of what made the original trilogy so good. If George had access to better special effects, would we still have gotten scenes like these?

Or would we have gotten this instead?

George being able to do “whatever he wants” does not necessarily lead to the best movie.

and hate that I can’t find copies without the added crap

Search up “Harmy despecialized” and “4k77”. There are many other Star Wars fans who feel the way you do, and they have taken matters into their own hands :)