Star Wars: The Wrong Trousers

[Raja]

I think people can have different things they find bothersome about a show, that's just how it works. I didn't really even think of the aliens in Andor point before it was brought up here and I think it's reasonable if someone finds that to be an issue for them.

It's not *that* big a deal to me, but certainly a choice and I can see why it might land properly for someone else.

 

[Corvinus85]

While the Empire may not be totally speciest, it does have a track record of treating non-humans way worse.

Wookies - enslaved and their planet heavily exploited.

Geonosians - wiped out

Lasat - nearly wiped out; they lost the settled planet of Lasan.

Kaminoans - practically wiped out.

Twi'leks - also mostly enslaved, with their planet exploited by the Empire.

So my point is that the prison where Andor was sent was maybe "too good" for aliens. It did look like the assemblies were done in clean rooms. Mines, foundries and other more dangerous places were probably were most alien prisoners/slaves were sent by the Empire.

 

[Lord Varys]

21 hours ago, Ran said:

Yes, obviously, Andor made a choice, but I don't think all shows need to cover all the bases of the Star Wars universe.

You can also take that approach and say that the original Star Wars all white men and one token white in white woman ... and that sets the baseline for the Star Wars universe.

Thing is - unless there are good reason to stick to only a couple of people in a very isolated place this galaxy's default setting is now multi-species diversity. And it is a bad creative decision to double back on that.

21 hours ago, Ran said:

And I agree that the Empire being pretty speciest should be canonical by now. 

It is so far not made explicit in the new canon. And I really don't see how they would want to do it with an Imperial Senate full of aliens.

22 hours ago, hauberk said:

Even the ergonomics of mass production make sense to narrow the field. Certainly, the species you mentioned are likely similar enough from an ergonomic standpoint but including Dugs or Mon Calamari to say nothing of other sized aliens doesn’t make sense. 

For the sake of the forced labor thing I'd concede that it might have made sense to have no Dugs or Hutts there ... but then there could have been different work tables for different species. I mean, guys, this is fucking fiction. If they had wanted to do it, they would have done it.

22 hours ago, hauberk said:

TBB is at the very beginning of the transition to Empire - literally beginning with Order 66. Hardly the same Empire in place ~10 years later when Andor takes place.

During Andor we get a couple of scenes in the Senate and there are still some aliens there, so that argument doesn't hold much merit. Also kind of insane to assume a multi-species Empire could just erase or oust its non-human population when in total they should make up the majority of the total population of the Empire.

22 hours ago, hauberk said:

It’s absolutely canonical that we’ve never seen an outwardly non-humanoid (barring Thrawn) uniformed member of the imperial forces. Alien native species means that the heist team can’t both disguise as natives and as imperial troops.  Alien pilot is certainly possible but necessitates using the Wookie prisoner or some similar feint to get them to the ship.

While that is true - we have also that confirmed for the Republic, so it doesn't mean much.

The military being the domains of humans doesn't mean they are the ones in charge.

12 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Ultimately it's a choice. It's a choice that the director also largely made with Rogue One too. It's not that big of a deal, but it would have been nicer and more star warsy if they had more aliens. 

That is actually a pretty big deal for me, part of why Rogue One is a movie I'll most likely never watch again. The others being the slow-going story, the ridiculous portrayal of the leaders of the Rebellion and the fact that the only three dimensional character in that movie is a fucking droid.

9 hours ago, Heartofice said:

All three trilogies have centred around humans, with aliens only ever being part of the background and only ever in certain locations. I’ve always had the sense that humans are the main species of the story, but there are places with more aliens than others.

Star Wars isn't just those three trilogies and the past ain't the future. As things go along, non-human characters become more and more important - there are Maul, Grievous, Ventress as antagonists ... and then Ahsoka Tano and Hera Syndulla as heroes.

The notion you have to center a story around a human character is silly. In fact, it is quite silly that Cassian Andor is a human male. He could have easily enough being some alien character ... even more so because of his backwater world origin story.

And thinking along those lines - he foster mother could have been non-human, the place he ended up living could have been predominantly non-human - which could have had two narrative purposes: One to emphasize that he was no longer at home but in a strange and otherly environment, and two to show that certain non-human species were indeed not exactly thriving under Imperial rule.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Actually, I remember reading an interview with Gilroy (don't have a link, sorry), where he explicitely stated that they wanted to tackle important issues and portray deep emotions and that it would have been incompatible with having more aliens, because then the audience wouldn't have been able to take the show seriously(?!!!). So yes, it was a choice and the one which displays paucity of imagination, IMHO. I loved Andor, but I found this aspect of it to be very disappointing and much more than a nitpick, seeing how aliens usually stand for different cultures, the Other, etc. In fact, aliens existing in  numbers in the setting, but being marginalized by the narrative to this degree kinda goes against what Gilroy is reaching for thematically... IMHO, of course.

Yeah, it is kind of silly to stop at broadening diversity among actors while reducing in-universe diversity. They are unintentionally funny there by claiming that Andor and his sister have a specific 'planet look' ... as if humans - who come in all ethnicities on this planet - would not exist in all ethnicities in every Star Wars galaxy they colonized or settled on.

Nobody would care about race in humans in this setting, they would only care about different species.

In Mandalorian I also find it kind of silly that there are no white blondes among the Mandalorians who remained behind on the planet. TCW established Mandalore as an ethnically very homogenous place so that kind of thing should have been reflected later on among Bo-Katan's faction and the guys who stayed behind ... at least to a point. Instead we get black and darker looking folks on Mandalore and only dark-haired guys among Bo-Katan's followers.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

Didn't even have to be the prison, but for instance  inhabitants of the heist planet should have been aliens - they honestly felt pretty fake as humans to me. There is also no reason why a humanoid-shaped alien couldn't have easily disguised themselves as a stormtrooper in armor,  or why there couldn't have been more aliens among the Ferrix people. Or why that officer needed to be motivated by romance. Etc, etc.

Yeah, the natives there look and feel like caricatures of native human people, turning the Imperials more into the British Empire than what they actually are.

4 hours ago, Maia said:

I also think that trying to align the new Star Wars installments with the OT in such aspects that were clearly of their time or necessitated by technical limitations, is a mistake. I liked Rogue One, but Jyn literally being a "scientist's beautiful daughter", who only got involved in the mission because of her father,  with every other team member and  Resistance operative being male, grated on me. Ditto everybody being human with a couple of token aliens in non-speaking (IIRC) roles.

Yeah, that's a big reason why Rogue One sucks for me. Jyn has this great intro scene ... and then some dude has to free and save her because she is some big shot's daughter??? She should have been a rebel operative from the start and then we should have gotten to the plot. Her connection to her dad could have still been there, of course, with perhaps, at first, only her realizing what the Death Star project is about, etc.

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

If this stuff is important to you then ok fine, but the SW disney-verse is already over burdened with trying to make banal politic points instead of being.. actually good. Pointing to pretty much the only good thing Disney has done with the franchise in years and saying it's not making the right progressive noises is just utterly wearisome.

This has nothing to be do with progressive noises but how the Star Wars universe is depicted. It is a multi-species place. Period. That's how it is. And if you tell stories at that place you better get the scenery right.

1 hour ago, DMC said:

As for Rogue One having more women..I guess?  In terms of the main crew there's like, what, three men and Jyn?  I guess four if you count the pilot, or five if you consider K-2 "male."  I suppose that could've been more evenly divided among the key characters, but again, minor complaint.

The women thing there is unpleasantly evocative of Leia as the token girl in ANH. Fun to see you also only name the droid there. He is the only real character in that movie, after all.

[Ran]

Looking at the numbers, and discounting non-sentient species, the whole Jabba sequence has just a couple of more species than the catina scene. I'm not minimizing it, though, because my broader point is that Tatooine, this disreputable planet on the outer rim of the galaxy far from the eye of the Empire (and the Republic before it, seemingly)  is this multi-species gathering place, whereas many other worlds are not. I think we're to take it that humans are the most numerous, most widely-spread species in the galaxy, and that they especially dominate the core... and they dominate the rebellion.

As to Rogue One, I feel like it's bizarrely reductive to boil Jyn down to "beautiful scientist's daughter".

Is her beauty mentioned in the film, does it play a role of any kind to the plot? It exists for the audience to have a pretty person to look at, it has no role in the story. Does her gender have any role other than I guess giving a heteronormative vaguely romantic relationship that is unconsummated? She doesn't try to seduce anyone, doesn't try to use her feminine wiles, you could have made it Jan Urso, square-jawed manly man, and the story would have worked exactly the same, beat for beat (except maybe you'd genderswap Andor to Cassia Andor).

Isn't the whole thing that Jyn has lived the life of a fugitive and outlaw who holds no ideal greater than her own survival, until a figure from her past (her father) is put in danger and that's the thing that then opens her to discovering an ideal greater than her survival? What exactly is bad about this? It's a tale old as time. It's part of why Casablanca still works 80 years after it was made.

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Ran

[hauberk]

Did a little review. The Senate was dissolved in 0 BBY. More aliens in the Coruscant street scenes would absolutely be appropriate in Andor - likewise Rogue One among the commandos. 
 

The script was constructed in a way that does provide in-story reasons for the prison (or at least that work group) to be human (or at least same general anthropometrics) with the separation by homeworld scene.  
 

Far less explicit with the heist team, but the scenario is constructed to favor a team that can appear to be both native inhabitant and imperial. 
 

Regardless, Andor and Rogue One were both very enjoyable and, I maintain that Andor is an outlier from standard Star Wars fare by being so much less about the merch. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, hauberk said:

but the scenario is constructed to favor a team that can appear to be both native inhabitant and imperial. 

Particularly considering all but two of the members of the team are intended to pose as imperials.

[Kalbear]

I also think that Andor could have done a more interesting job of showing how the nonhuman species were getting marginalized explicitly as well as implicitly in the timeframe by the Empire. It would have been interesting to see the Empire more directly crackdown on other aliens. Would have been interesting as well to see Luthen weaponize this as a way to drive more races to support the Rebellion; making a planet revolt or frame an alien race as responsible for some imperial calamity.

Again, it's not a major complaint and the show is awesome - made even more awesome by comparison to other SW shows. It would be interesting to make the xenophobic policies in the Empire more apparent and top-down, instead of a general speciest viewpoint combined with a lack of aliens in Empire positions.  

[Frey family reunion]

Rogue one had a lot of cool looking character designs for characters who got only a few seconds of screen time.  I was kind of hoping Andor would have fleshed out one or two of those characters.

[DMC]

Why does everyone seem to be referring to Andor in the past tense?  There are two more seasons, right?  Just googling "Andor Season 2," I see Whitaker will be returning as Saw - mayhaps they work in the Guardian of the Whills duo as well.  Albeit that'd presumably just be a cameo since Cassian clearly had never met them before Rogue One.

As for the common critique of "few seconds of screentime" and "no characterization" for the key characters in Rogue One, I've always thought this is bollocks.  The film moves quickly, sure, but all of them are given appropriate screen time and characterization in terms of proper distribution.  I think this criticism is derived largely from it being a standalone film - and the fact everybody dies - which makes it unique for a Star Wars film/series.  But the more I think about it the more ridiculous it is.  Like, you don't often hear anyone complain about the lack of screentime/characterization for all the guys in Reservoir Dogs.

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

There are two more seasons, right?

Just one more season.

I agree with you, the film handled its cast exactly as a film introducing a bunch of new characters should: focus on one or two, the rest are thinner and tend to be broadly distinct from one another as secondary cast. Action ensemble films don't have time for tons of depth among its characters.

 

[DMC]

27 minutes ago, Ran said:

Just one more season.

Ah, thanks.  I see Gilroy's explanation for why he condensed it (also not sure where I got three from).  Anyway, sounds like it was his decision, or at least he's on board with it.  Still, boo.  Wanted more.

[IlyaP]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Ah, thanks.  I see Gilroy's explanation for why he condensed it (also not sure where I got three from).  Anyway, sounds like it was his decision, or at least he's on board with it.  Still, boo.  Wanted more.

It's also a big undertaking, and each season is a 2 year process (roughly), from pre-production to release, so committing to six years of anything - in advance - is a big ask for anyone. 

[VigoTheCarpathian]

I would really like to see a Star Wars story with the script and acting of Andor, that incorporates great alien interaction.  The tension and emoting (and/or the money to make it work on screen) seem to be barriers toward those ends for long scenes - I liked B2EMO.  
 

I shudder to think about about having any repeats of the pretty blatant and non-immersive cheesiness of the PT green screen “great actors talking to floating tennis balls” scenes.  

[sifth]

My only issue with Rogue One, is Disney choosing to CGI the faces of dead actors onto new ones. Seeing zombie Tarkin and Leia in that film, was just creepy for me. I mean they could have just called up Wayne Pygram to play Tarkin, he looks a lot like Peter Cushing anyway. As for Leia, all they needed to do was the hand off, with the hood up; there was no need to show us her face.

[Lord Varys]

17 hours ago, DMC said:

As for the common critique of "few seconds of screentime" and "no characterization" for the key characters in Rogue One, I've always thought this is bollocks.  The film moves quickly, sure, but all of them are given appropriate screen time and characterization in terms of proper distribution.  I think this criticism is derived largely from it being a standalone film - and the fact everybody dies - which makes it unique for a Star Wars film/series.  But the more I think about it the more ridiculous it is.  Like, you don't often hear anyone complain about the lack of screentime/characterization for all the guys in Reservoir Dogs.

It shows a bunch of random dudes who end up dying in a suicide missions for reasons that are barely developed or given. I don't agree with the silly premise that the guys stealing the fucking Death Star plans were a bunch of barely developed Han Solos - they shouldn't have run with such a stupid tale. But if it had to be this way then, please, focus on the people who are doing this and develop them. Don't turn them into random guys who decide on a whim that some cause they were not, in fact, invested in half an hour earlier is it worth to throw their lives away.

You can do something like that with one character per movie ... and then only if you really flesh this character out. But not with an entire team of rebel operative (sans Andor, I guess).

23 minutes ago, Crazy Old Guy said:

Ngl:

The Bad Batch > The Mandalorian so far.

I can't believe that The Bad Batch is ending after only 3 seasons and The Mandalorian will probably get a fourth or fifth or whatever.

Plus: Zillo beast.

Need I say more?  @Lord Varys

Well, The Mandalorian is getting kind of stale and boring. I mean, does anybody actually care that, like, a hundred dudes live on their ruined planet again? Bringing back the Moff guy as antagonist also felt like them running out of ideas.

[Jaxom 1974]

20 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

I also think that Andor could have done a more interesting job of showing how the nonhuman species were getting marginalized explicitly as well as implicitly in the timeframe by the Empire. It would have been interesting to see the Empire more directly crackdown on other aliens. Would have been interesting as well to see Luthen weaponize this as a way to drive more races to support the Rebellion; making a planet revolt or frame an alien race as responsible for some imperial calamity.

Again, it's not a major complaint and the show is awesome - made even more awesome by comparison to other SW shows. It would be interesting to make the xenophobic policies in the Empire more apparent and top-down, instead of a general speciest viewpoint combined with a lack of aliens in Empire positions.  

I thought it was interesting that, in The Bad Batch, it's non human members of the Senate who put into motion the plan to replace the clones. Whether it was meant deliberately or not, I took that as a direct result of the manipulation to marginalize alien species from the upper levels of power within the Empire. I'm sure I need to think this line of thought through a little more though...

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

20 hours ago, DMC said:

Why does everyone seem to be referring to Andor in the past tense?  There are two more seasons, right?  Just googling "Andor Season 2," I see Whitaker will be returning as Saw - mayhaps they work in the Guardian of the Whills duo as well.  Albeit that'd presumably just be a cameo since Cassian clearly had never met them before Rogue One.

As for the common critique of "few seconds of screentime" and "no characterization" for the key characters in Rogue One, I've always thought this is bollocks.  The film moves quickly, sure, but all of them are given appropriate screen time and characterization in terms of proper distribution.  I think this criticism is derived largely from it being a standalone film - and the fact everybody dies - which makes it unique for a Star Wars film/series.  But the more I think about it the more ridiculous it is.  Like, you don't often hear anyone complain about the lack of screentime/characterization for all the guys in Reservoir Dogs.

I worry that with the critical acclaim Andor has received Disney will be more “involved” in the second season…

[Slurktan]

8 hours ago, sifth said:

My only issue with Rogue One, is Disney choosing to CGI the faces of dead actors onto new ones. Seeing zombie Tarkin and Leia in that film, was just creepy for me. I mean they could have just called up Wayne Pygram to play Tarkin, he looks a lot like Peter Cushing anyway. As for Leia, all they needed to do was the hand off, with the hood up; there was no need to show us her face.

Carrie Fisher gave them permission to do that and was still alive when rogue one came out.

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But if it had to be this way then, please, focus on the people who are doing this and develop them. Don't turn them into random guys who decide on a whim that some cause they were not, in fact, invested in half an hour earlier is it worth to throw their lives away.

I mean, you could level this same criticism at ANH.  Luke, obviously, wasn't involved in the rebellion before the movie starts.  Granted, his family played a key role - just like Jyn's.  There's only one member of the main gang that's been involved in the rebellion - Leia - just as there's only one for Rogue One with Cassian.  To each their own of course, but I don't view this as a legitimate detriment to the film.

Also, obviously, there are a bunch of randos that join "Rogue One" in the Yavin scenes that have been fighting the rebellion.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

To each their own of course, but I don't view this as a legitimate detriment to the film.

No one should. You get very odd opinions out here on the interwebs sometime.