Andor: The Most Engrossing Star Wars Story to Come out of the Franchise? Matthew Kail Explains How Star Wars Becomes Black and White
Star Wars has had a rough go of it recently. The final film in the franchise, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, was mediocre. Its TV universe has filled some voids, but despite breakouts like The Mandalorian, the success rate since has been hit or miss. The Book of Boba Fett didn’t make much of a splash; Bad Batch seemed alright. Even ostensibly stellar series like Obi-Wan Kenobi have had to face other problems, like racist fans upset with the series’s casting. At a time when it could be dominating, Star Wars these days feels like it’s just trucking along, a droid lost in the desert.
For a show with big straight-to-video energy—an origin story for a supporting character in a one-off movie about the plot to steal some blueprints—the latest Star Wars story to hit Disney+ is easily the most engrossing thing to come out of the franchise this year, if not in many years.
The new Star Wars series Andor, a prequel to the 2016 film Rogue One, is a dramatic examination of the early days of the Rebel Alliance. Science fiction author Matt London is an ardent fan of the show.
Kail agrees that Andor is a complex piece of story telling. “In every other Star Wars, there’s black and there’s white,” she says. “There’s no crossover. Everything in this show is about moral ambiguity. Every single situation has gray tones. And that, for me, is why this is an adult show. There is nothing in the world that is black and white. Some choices hurt other people. That’s the way life is, and that’s the way war is.”
Gilroy’s gift then, may be that he’s not a Star Wars fanboy. Jon and Dave Filoni make great shows because they know what they are talking about. The author has said in interviews that his learning curve for the franchise was steep and he was freed to develop new kinds of Star Wars stories because he didn’t stick to the canon.
Andor: A Girl With Power and Violence, Part 3: The Podcast Episode 533: Matt London, Andrea Kail, and Erin Lindsey
“There’s so much subtext in the dialog of Andor, and there’s so much communicated in the silences,” London says in Episode 533 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It’s not passive viewing. I believe it takes an active mind to engage. It isn’t a kids show.
Andor focuses on the reality of power and violence instead of the fun aspects of Star Wars. The show features a depiction of politics that is completely believable, according to an author who worked for many years as a UN aid worker. “I think there are clearly people on the writing team who are students of spy novels like [those by] John le Carré and who are students of politics and students of history, who are really looking at how revolution has happened here on Earth and what that looks like,” she says.
In Episode 533 of Geek’s Guide to the galaxy, the full interview with Matt London,Andrea Kail, andErin Lindsey is available. You can find some highlights from the discussion below.
Source: https://www.wired.com/2023/01/geeks-guide-andor/
What Do Little Girl Characters Tell About Imperialism, and What Are They Doing? Majorana’s Theoretical Expectation for the Final Episode
I don’t like little girl characters. The child they portrayed in the film was a spoiled little girl, who ran off because she didn’t want to do what she had to do and in the process she got a bunch of people killed. And that is never addressed. She is a cute little girl, and everybody wants to love her. I’m sorry. She had a bunch of people killed so she didn’t want to go to something with her parents. I am insane if you put a spoiled child in your main character and have a great cast.
There is a deep character that can do things that are completely unexpected, but it is also consistent with everything you know about them. Andor is full of deep characters. In many Star Wars and sci-fi shows, the characters are one-dimensional, because in every scene, they have the exact same personality and you can’t see different from that. These characters are private, vulnerable moments where you can see different but consistent sides to them.
What makes a government of any kind work is the technocrats and the apparatchiks and the bureaucrats, and they have a variety of different motivations. And one of the things that they’ve got [in Andor] is these two characters who showcase very clearly the degree to which personal ambition is the sort of be-all and end-all of motivations for these characters. What I hope we see going forward is at least a couple of characters who are doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Imperialism was enacted by a group of people who thought they were doing the right thing.
I think I expected more of a payoff in the final episode. A lot of people will be confused. There are so many amazing things that happen in the final episode. It’s true, there is. There is a message in the show that if you want to defeat the empire, you need to be a terrorist, and people are going to have to die. In the spirit of realism, I think the body count should have been higher. … We already know how this story ends, right? Everyone dies in a ball of fire. So why are we holding on to some of these characters? Couldn’t we have given them more definitive conclusions?