Star Wars: a story for every fan? (Andor Spoilers)

[Relic]

7 hours ago, Rubicante said:

Who is the bigger asshead in TLJ?  Luke, or Poe for that prank call scene at the start of the movie?

The more I reflect on TLJ, the more I hate it.  I can’t believe I am going to say this, but I think I like AOTC better than TLJ.

Yikes. TLJ IS one of those movies i dislike more as time goes on, but at least it was a well made MOVIE. AotC...not so much, altho there is an edited version that came out (in IMAX theaters) that cut a lot of the super cringe stuff out. 

[mormont]

So Andor was pretty good huh? :p

[Darryk]

6 hours ago, karaddin said:

Personally for me its one of the most "jedi heroic" act in all 9 movies. I never expect to convince people that hated the movie to actually like it, but I wish my liking it (at least until tRoS retrospectively ruined a lot of that) was also accepted as valid rather than being referred to as Disney propaganda or whatever the fuck it was someone said upthread. 

I didn't say you liking it was Disney propaganda, I said the idea that I didn't like it because it "was different and took risks" is Disney propaganda.

It's TLJ fans who usually don't recognise our dislike of it as valid. They say it's because we don't like new stuff, or we're too nostalgic, or we're racist / misogynism blablabla.

Of course the idea of Disney accusing anyone of racism is hilarious since they removed John Boyega from TFA poster in China.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 12/2/2022 at 7:10 PM, sifth said:

I think the man hates exposition. He likes events happening, even if there isn't always a logical reason for the events to be happening in the first place. On top of that his mystery box style of storytelling did not fit Star Wars at all. I find it kind of funny that he writes and directs the first time, comes back to write and direct the third film and doesn't bother to answer some of the questions he set up in his first movie. "It's a good question..............FOR ANOTHER DAY".

He thinks mystery is set dressing he never does anything with it.  Abrams… sucks.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 12/2/2022 at 10:21 PM, Raja said:

Lmao, Rian Johnson was doing everything other than be lazy and repeat tropes from previous films, TLJ was the last good star wars movie and I wish Johnson had written the last one too.  I don't think JJ is lazy per se, his films aren't really for me, but I don't think he's the best writer. I think he's decent if he has a good script.

TLJ was so “meh”.  I almost fell asleep in the theater.  

[karaddin]

34 minutes ago, Darryk said:

I didn't say you liking it was Disney propaganda, I said the idea that I didn't like it because it "was different and took risks" is Disney propaganda.

Clearly I misunderstood what you were saying then. Consider that part retracted.

The good thing about Andor is that they can't retrospectively lessen it because we've already got his death, no tRoS to come along and throw out all the plot threads I thought had been set up. Definitely no way a clearly dead character could somehow be brought back in a damaging way *nervous laugh*.

I might defend my enjoyment of TLJ but I'm sure as fuck not going to defend Disney. 

[Corvinus85]

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

There are a lot of good conceptual ideas in TLJ, a lot of nice ideas, but having nice ideas is the easy bit. Execution is the hard bit and TLJ is full of absolutely awful execution.

I have no problem with Luke being a hermit, I didn’t mind his ending, I hated pretty much everything else he did in this movie.. starting with drinking Green alien milk. That kind of sums up pretty much everything wrong with TLJ.

I re-watched Rogue One after Andor ended. There is a pitcher of green/blue milk in the Erso kitchen at the beginning of the movie. Therefore this stuff existed before TLJ. In TLJ we just got to see the origin story of the milk. 

[Maltaran]

I assume the Wookie is the padawan from Clone Wars 

[Kalbear]

21 hours ago, Ran said:

"I had a vision from the Force that said the only way to make sure Snoke did not succeed was to find this place, Ahch-to. There was something there, something so important that I knew this was the place I had to be. I left a map for my friends to find me, if they really needed me, but I had to make the trip alone."

"But then, once I spent time here, I realized that I had to stay here for good, because if I ever left, even worse would happen. Worse for Leia, for Han, for the Republic, for the galaxy."

I mean, this is easy stuff?

It's easy if you don't care about it sounding like anything better than 'somehow, Palpatine returned'. There are tons of holes in the above and it sounds incredibly lame. Now, could Star Wars have done it? Sure! Star Wars does stupid shit like this all the time, including the entire season of Mandalorian and Boba Fett and Obi-Wan! But it isn't exactly easy to do while making it make any sense at all. For instance, another problem with the above is that somehow you have to justify Luke all of a sudden taking action now - instead of before, where an entire system got blown up and Han died. If Luke wasn't going to take action after that why would he do anything just because Rey shows up? 

Now, you might not consider that to be an important question but it's clear that RJ thought it was a pretty big deal. 

21 hours ago, Ran said:

If he did, he would have listened to Hamill and worked to find the middle path, like the above or something else that suited. It's not hard. Johnson was just set on having a specific vision of Luke as a broke-down Jedi so riddled with guilt that he decided nothing was more important than his wallowing in his guilt.

I don't think this tracks with what RJ or Hamill have said in public nor do I think it's particularly fair. Once he made the choice he was happily willing to justify it, but RJ did not go into this wanting to have Luke as a failed teacher. 

[Lord Varys]

Luke's actions in TLJ are about as 'heroic' as a wife-beater apologizing to his wife on his deathbed - it is too little too late.

Luke Skywalker abandoned his family, his friends, and the galaxy to evil, which lead to the deaths of billions, his friend Han Solo and his twin sister (eventually) included.

There was no reason for this given in the movie aside from Luke being a demented ass (that's the only way you can refer to the guy considering to murder his young nephew with ignited lightsaber in hand) who belatedly came to the conlusion that the order he joined in the OT sucked because of PT stuff.

In context, it is also not clear that Luke actually knows that his projection thingy there is going to kill him - if he didn't know that, if it was just a result of him being to drunk on disgusting alien milk, say, then his death is just a result of his weakness, not of him heroically sacrificing himself.

Luke's entire story - that Rey's arrival doesn't survive as a catalyst to motivate him to pull himself together and get his lazy ass back to his twin sister - is shit and cheap way to create tension since it is now a big surprise that Luke does show up on the planet in the end. It is the same as the Ents not deciding to fight Saruman or Frodo sending Sam back home in the Jackson movies.

In context one actually wonders why the hell Leia of all people still cares for the galaxy and crap. Shouldn't she, as the mother of the monster, not be even more depressed than Luke? She give birth to the twisted pervert, after all. It is her Force talent that was passed on to the brat, so his crimes are literally more her fault than Luke's - he may have trained him, but she gave birth to him.

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

He thinks mystery is set dressing he never does anything with it.  Abrams… sucks.

Just actually sit down and process the ridiculous details of the 'the map to Palpatine plot' in TROS. That's as silly as the 'the map to Luke plot' from TFA with the added bonus that neither method to decipher the map nor the details actually make sense. No sane person would ever do shit like that.

How little thought people put in the plot of TFA can be drawn from the simple fact that the place Luke apparently went to is never named, nor a name given to the planet. That's why it is effectively a map to a person - who, not being a place, could easily enough NO LONGER BE AT THAT PLACE!!!

39 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

It's easy if you don't care about it sounding like anything better than 'somehow, Palpatine returned'. There are tons of holes in the above and it sounds incredibly lame. Now, could Star Wars have done it? Sure! Star Wars does stupid shit like this all the time, including the entire season of Mandalorian and Boba Fett and Obi-Wan! But it isn't exactly easy to do while making it make any sense at all. For instance, another problem with the above is that somehow you have to justify Luke all of a sudden taking action now - instead of before, where an entire system got blown up and Han died. If Luke wasn't going to take action after that why would he do anything just because Rey shows up? 

There were ways to kind of salvage the 'Luke is gone' plot from TFA, especially since the movie didn't really establish how long Luke was actually gone. Say, if it was only a year or a couple of years (say, 2-3 years) then he could have had both a good reason to go away as well as be justified in his absence if he couldn't leave wherever he was stuck because of reasons he couldn't control (say, his ship was destroyed, he was injured and had to heal first, or he was imprisoned by another force).

Again, it is TLJ that introduces moping and depressed who hates the Jedi because Darth Sidious won, who considered murdering his own nephew, and who abandoned everyone after his Jedi school failed. TFA didn't have that guy.

And the implication there was that Luke and Snoke actually knew each other, that whatever led to the fall of Luke's nephew was more complex than Luke having a bad dream and considering murdering the brat. In turn, this implied that Luke going underground may have had to do with him investigating Snoke - the villains in TFA seem to be pretty determined to stop the good guys from getting to Luke and/or getting him back before they can implement their plans. That plot thread was dropped completely in the wake of Snoke's sudden demise in TLJ.

[RumHam]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

And the implication there was that Luke and Snoke actually knew each other

From my poking around on Wookiepeida last week, they did know each other. Luke was responsible for some of Snoke's disfigurement, but it was really vague.

[Ran]

5 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I re-watched Rogue One after Andor ended. There is a pitcher of green/blue milk in the Erso kitchen at the beginning of the movie. Therefore this stuff existed before TLJ. In TLJ we just got to see the origin story of the milk. 

It shows up in Andor too, right? Pretty sure Cyril's cereal has blue milk.

[Lord Varys]

41 minutes ago, RumHam said:

From my poking around on Wookiepeida last week, they did know each other. Luke was responsible for some of Snoke's disfigurement, but it was really vague.

Yes, one imagines this stuff comes from the novelizations of TFA or other such material. TLJ not only destroyed that plot thread, but made it pointless to bother exploring it in books and comics ... which would be the reason why so far nobody has elaborated on that.

I pretty much read all the 'New Canon' Star Wars comics during the last couple of months (so far I'm not really bothering with the novels but may eventually read the Zahn stuff - although the comic adaptation of the first new Thrawn novel indicates an overly complicated plot with another Car'das Thrawn-is-so-great fanboy character) and it is really glaring how little material explores the ST era and how bad the comics focusing on Fetish Guy are. Did you know there were bunch of Jedi who didn't bother exploring the ruins of the Jedi school to check if Luke Skywalker survived or not?

Most of the other stuff is mediocre with some really good stuff. The early Vader comics portraying him as this omniscient supremely competent supervillain are ridiculous, though. The later stuff which brings back Sabé is not bad. Luke's attempts to connect with Jedi remnants, etc. in-between ANH and TESB are also good at times. The weirdo stuff around frozen Han is, of course, reminscent of some of the worst Marvel comics following Boba Fett. Them exploring Lobot is a welcome surprise. Also the return of the Tagges and the cyborg bounty hunter Beilert Valance. Putting him with young Han at the Imperial Academy was a nice detail, too.

Doctor Aphra and her droids are pretty fun, but there is too little character development there.

[DMC]

Finally watched Andor last night/this morning.  Haven't read any of these threads and obviously I'm late so won't say much other than that it met my very high expectations.  One random thing for me though watching it all within 12 hours is when did the Empire become noticeably British?  The accents are whatever, but from the pronunciation of schedule and lieutenant to calling the elevator the lift, it really stuck out.

ETA:  Oh, the other thing I was a bit disappointed with is there weren't, like, any alien characters.  Seems kind of pushy to want an adult story and then complain about that, but it would have been nice to see someone with an actual role in the show be non-human.

[Denvek]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Finally watched Andor last night/this morning.  Haven't read any of these threads and obviously I'm late so won't say much other than that it met my very high expectations.  One random thing for me though watching it all within 12 hours is when did the Empire become noticeably British?  The accents are whatever, but from the pronunciation of schedule and lieutenant to calling the elevator the lift, it really stuck out.

1977 when Peter Cushing played Grand Moff Tarkin. And the OT was filmed in the UK too, so it, like Andor, had a lot of the minor Imperial roles played by minor British actors.

[DaveSumm]

Yea I liked the casting of the background Empire guys. The accents, plus dropping the general trend for these kind of shows to cast younger, slimmer people. Felt more like ANH to see some random fat blokes like Alex Ferns (who, between this and Chernobyl, has come a long way from being despised nationwide for beating up Little Mo on Eastenders).

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, Denvek said:

1977 when Peter Cushing played Grand Moff Tarkin. And the OT was filmed in the UK too, so it, like Andor, had a lot of the minor Imperial roles played by minor British actors.

I'm aware - and like I said I'm totally fine with actors just using their natural accents - it just was never so prominent as in Andor.

[Ran]

I feel like it's a bit deliberate, but I'm not sure. To me it all felt of a piece with how very, very East India Company-ish/colonialist Pre-Mor was in the first episode, and the way the inspector spoke. Very Victorian.

[DMC]

16 minutes ago, Ran said:

I feel like it's a bit deliberate, but I'm not sure. To me it all felt of a piece with how very, very East India Company-ish/colonialist Pre-Mor was in the first episode, and the way the inspector spoke. Very Victorian.

I think it meshed well with the general Kubrick vibe they were giving the depiction of the Empire, which I enjoyed very much.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I just rewatched Andor over the last three days.  Damn that show is really great.  Derdra Meero is one of the best Villians I’ve seen in a long time.  Competitent, driven, and ruthless.  They should have put her in charge of Storm Trooper marksmanship.