Andor [Disney+]

Dr Bob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119734731#Comment_119734731

Useless fact the guy that played him is from Dublin , (Stanley Townsend) that's the third Irish actor to show up on Andor so far .

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119735729#Comment_119735729

Noticed that... taking the Emperors shilling as a Commandant!

And the crag faced Aldhani native leader was another Scot... David Hayman.

pjcb

ep 6

Spoiler Warning

I thought yerman who said he had a brother, really did have a brother and was testing Andor, eitherway shooting him was extreme.

Plus not using a secure comms channel?

Loafing Oaf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119735729#Comment_119735729

Fourth I believe:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-40962404.html

We had an lengthy discussion about this riveting topic upthread...

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119737013#Comment_119737013

Ya I thought that as well.

Slydice

6: Now THAT! was cool!

Spoiler Warning

Yet dark and foreboding. Felt like proper Rogue One build up.

Now what happens next! It's likely going to change a bit in how it feels.

That finishes the three episodes Dan Gilroy / Susanna White writer/director trilogy.

The next episode is a one off by Stephen Schiff / Benjamin Caron. Shiff wrote for The Americans!

Spoiler Warning

Casian hasn't actually left just yet. Maybe he'll somehow stay.. or else not get far. I'm not saying he can't go off with himself but there's got to be something to keep him on board.

Definitely some dark empire reprisals coming up too I think.

Maybe .. just maybe this one Schiff/Caron episode will be a standalone.. something with Casian maybe.. or not.. who knows 🙂

gmisk

Episode 6....a cracker of an episode.

The heist was gripping and really well done, decent shoot out.

Spoiler Warning

I suppose we were always going to lose one or two of the gang, they went with the most obvious firdt. The crushing in the escape felt a bit contrived.

Andor wasn't taking any nonsense from the guy with the fake brother.

Was the plan always to leave one of them behind?

The ceremony was pretty epic.

More Denise Gough on the way I would say...no bad thing!

Top notch CGI throughout the episode as well.

pjcb

overdoing the Andor, Im not committed to the cause thing, its just not believable.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119740351#Comment_119740351

But he also shot your man because he is committed to the cause.

I think he just freaked cause he shot him

ohnonotgmail

A fantastic episode. Dr quadpaw made me laugh

pixelburp

Episode 4 and lots of really effective vignettes that worked for me. This is quickly attaining the status of Top Tier Star Wars; it's bordering on Best in Class across all the films and TV series. Genuinely. I think I already prefer this to Mandalorian.

The Coroscant stuff was fabulous. It's actually remarkable this show, its characters, exist in the same universe as Reva and those ludicrously camp villains from Obi-Wan. It's night and day stuff. Here was the world exactly as one might presume: bureaucracy being the mundane reality of the empire, the casual acceptance of cruelty by the remaining ruling class trying to keep their status; the few principled people trying to change things using facades & playing roles while living precarious existences within the margins. The show has far exceeded by hopes in terms of what the Star Wars universe can be on-screen, when allowed to grow up a little alongside its audience.

It has done such a good job, I've sometimes forgotten there even are Skywalkers, Vaders and so on - I can relate to how this universe must have felt for those living so far from the myths of the film trilogy. You can see how "Jedi" became something fictitious - ludicrous even. What meaning do laser-swords and magic have on worlds utterly industrialised to the point of being inhospitable?

Mind you, there's no getting away from it, Andor himself is a bit of a nothing; the show has done such a magnificent job breathing life and character into every other member of the cast, it has kinda forgotten the titular one. Andor himself just comes across a little bewildered and certainly lacks agency. Given the more drastic and hardened man we met in Rogue One, I presume this is where we're going, ultimately. Also, weird how much the Mon Mothma actor reminded me of Kristin Scott Thomas.

Fantastic use of the Scottish Highlands setting; really added an earthiness to the setting that emphasised just how isolated and ragtag this squad of proto-rebels were. While the little world-building moments explaining the history of the planet were engrossing; again, really showing the actual cost of The Empire. Not so much snarling evil and red lightsabers, more aggressive ambivalence towards the rights and status of people.

Slydice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119749402#Comment_119749402

Do you associate this show more with Star Wars or Rogue One?

AMKC

Very dissapointed with that episode. It was ll over the place. Honestly how did the rebels go from being on the side of a hill to all of a sudden inside this place in imperial Uniforms too and no one noticed.

Ye someone died here or there truth is I did not really car as they have been so dull and boring anyway with such dull backstories too. Who died I could not really tell you.

This or OBI ONE I will pick Oki One or even the Mandoloran any day. Both far better shows and far more enjoyable. This is a slug in comparison.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119750323#Comment_119750323

I think you need to watch it again. It was very clear what happened

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119749471#Comment_119749471

I don't follow the question, as Rogue One is Star Wars - it was just a grubbier version hitherto unseen outside the old Expanded Universe media.

Star Wars has a unique problem among pop culture, in that it's technically a very complex galaxy or factions and authoritarianism ... that's also a fun romp with cute aliens and laser swords available in your local toy store. You could take either approach and it'd work - but they don't gel either.

Tony EH

@pixelburp

It's actually remarkable this show, its characters, exist in the same universe as Reva and those ludicrously camp villains from Obi-Wan

This is my over all issue with Star Wars in general. You have the sublime mixing with the ludicrous at all levels irrespective of whether it's Lucas or the mouse at the helm. So far the option to jettison the poorer quality material exists thankfully. So people can just ignore shit wars and look at the good stuff which, unfortunately, is outnumbered these days by the bad.

As for 'Andor', I'm fully in agreement with you in that it's, probably, the best written thing that Diswars has done. I'm completely hooked and I cannot recall the last time I said that about any TV show in quite a while. The writing, the characters, the set pieces, the tone, are all top notch. even the deliberate pacing suits.

I've never really been into channels dropping every episode at once, but with this show I wish they had.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119750323#Comment_119750323

Did you watch it and subsequently write that post with a few pints in ya ?

Acosta

Very solid show. Enjoying it. And visually stunning too. Obi-Wan looks like a dumpster fire in comparison. Gilroy is very good at what he does.

TheIrishGrover

Another great episode. Some was very predictable

Spoiler Warning

The kid had "Dead Meat" written all over him the instant you saw him

But there were some surprises.

Again, as everyone has said, it just LOOKS so good. Sure, that Holodeck-type thing they use for The Mandalorian is great for desert scenes but you could never do the outdoor shots of Andor on that, what with the weather and all. That shot of the Tie-fighter buzzing past them last week was simply amazing. You could practically FEEL the shockwave as it passed and the roar deafening them. It felt visceral. Felt "real" (I know, I know, spaceship. Aliens. You know what I mean). A good portion of that "realness" is down to the characters. These are not boy-scouts or high priests or mono-syllabic enigmas. These are all people.

For me, this is the new benchmark of Star Wars TV. I don't know it is being received in general but anything post this has a tough act to follow. And I include The Mandalorian in that. I don't want to see him wandering around with baby Yoda on another desolate desert planet or in spaceship after spaceship after small room...

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119750617#Comment_119750617

My brain and imagination genuinely struggles to picture a scene with Reva & her cohorts, and those Imperial Security officers sharing the same space. It's like two different shows, two wildly conflicting tones.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119757857#Comment_119757857

Well, I'll be honest. Reva was an afterthought. A character conjured up, probably, well into production for..."reasons". She makes absolutely no sense at all, even within the whatever attitude of Star Wars. She's a Jedi in training, that's nearly killed by Anakin (she somehow survives), that later joins the Empire to serve with Anakin (now Vader) to hunt down the remaining Jedi to be slaughtered...all so she can, at some point, get to Vader who bests her again and nearly kills her (she somehow survives), only to then race off to try and kill Luke Skywalker which she can't do, but Kenobi lets her off anyway.

The whole idea is so fucking stupid that insults the intelligence of the viewer and it smacks of interference by people other than the original writers. I cannot believe that any screen writer worth their salt came up with her, because a few seconds of inspection would reveal just how ridiculous that so called "character" is. Also, you could subtract Reva completely and the show would lose nothing.

Contrast that with the people we've seen in 'Andor' where everyone has made complete sense and come off as written with the context of their situation fully in mind.

Hopefully this show becomes the benchmark for Disney Star Wars for the foreseeable. And if there's to be some new movies, Disney could do a lot worse than to give the Gilroy's and Susanna White the writing and directing duties.

AMKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119750909#Comment_119750909

I did watch it and no because I do not drink. Its just a boring tedious show a bit like a V VV lol. Some people might get that. I for one can not wait for Obi One and The Mandolorian to cone back both much better than this slow tedious show.

Slydice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119750612#Comment_119750612

Wierd. I have this thing where I can recognise that Rogue One and Star Wars are different things and I can associate stuff between one and the other.

Oafley Jones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119758913#Comment_119758913

Obi Wan was nearly the finish of me with Star Wars altogether. Thankfully, the cast persuaded me here. It is jarring tonally though. A bad analogy that occurred to me: If your entire experience of WW2 movies was in the vain of "Kelly's Heroes" and now you had to process "Saving Private Ryan" as completely contemporaneous. The accents, the actors used, there's almost none of the "oh look it's a y-wing" type Easter eggs. It's all so different. I swear, if you came to it cold, and weren't that invested in the genre, you would be hard pushed to place it as Star Wars at all (based on the first couple episodes).

I also wonder about the production side of things. Did the location filming insulate it from Burbank? Or has it been in production that long?

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119766431#Comment_119766431

Good. What would be the point of exact recreations of Star Wars over and over again. The original audience grew up, the 2nd generation audience grew up an TV and movies changed so much in 50 years.

If you find a show made almost 50 years after the movie is "jarring" then honestly just give up and watch the originals forever and forgot about anything new.

Oafley Jones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119766788#Comment_119766788

Weirdly defensive take, given that I didn’t object to Andor.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119766913#Comment_119766913

Not defensive just not exactly sure what you are expecting.

Slydice

7: Wow! That episode was great! Just how it was all put together. Each scene felt really well done. Every tense moment felt heightened. All the interactions really personal.

Spoiler Warning

That ending.. Syril Karn.. working in that office place.. seeing what looked like numbers in front of him. I'm leaning towards him being rebellion side and pulling in either money .. or resources since fuel was mentioned in his job.

That scene with Maarva and B2EMO.. damn it was so personal between them and I got such a foreboding feeling at that moment that a lot of bad things might happen to all those people Cassian felt close to.

Then though.. Mon Mothma.. what an encounter! Top spy work done and acted there. Just how they got her to carry and explain herself and how well Genevieve O'Reilly acted it! Top stuff!

Anyway.. big kudos to writer/director Stephen Schiff / Benjamin Caron. A once off. Damn.

Next up is Beau Willimon / Toby Haynes for their trilogy. Toby directed the first three episodes so he's not new. Beau.. well.. Beau was the showrunner for the first four seasons of House of Cards. He's credited with writing 23 of the episodes before parting ways after season four. What his wiki says about his time there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Willimon

House of Cards

In 2012, Willimon developed House of Cards, the American adaption of the BBC series of the same name, for Netflix. It was produced by Media Rights Capital, David Fincher, and Kevin Spacey, and for five seasons starred Spacey as ruthless politician Frank Underwood and Robin Wright as his equally scheming wife Claire. The series also stars Kate Mara, Corey Stoll, Michael Kelly, Neve Campbell, Michel Gill, Jayne Atkinson, Sebastian Arcelus and Lars Mikkelsen. It premiered on Netflix on February 1, 2013.

Willimon served as the series' showrunner for its first four seasons, stepping down in January 2016.[28] House of Cards premiered its sixth and final season on November 2, 2018.[29]

On November 3, 2017, Netflix fired Spacey from House of Cards and cut all ties with the actor following several allegations of sexual misconduct. Several crew members on the House of Cards set accused Spacey of sexually harassing them.[30] When the accusations first surfaced in late October of that year, Willimon released a statement saying, "During the time I worked with Kevin Spacey on House of Cards, I neither witnessed nor was aware of any inappropriate behavior on set or off".[31] However, three House of Cards crew members have disputed that assertion, commenting anonymously in a Buzzfeed News article that Willimon was aware of Spacey's behavior, including an incident during the show's first season in which Spacey allegedly sexually assaulted a production assistant, and took no action against the actor.[32][33] A "higher-level source" for the article alleged that Willimon witnessed Spacey behaving inappropriately.[32] Willimon denied witnessing or knowing about the alleged assault, but said, “I am heartsick that anyone on the crew had to endure this sort of behavior. Clearly we as an industry, particularly those in a position of power, myself included, need to be more perceptive and proactive. We also need to do a better job at empowering and supporting our colleagues who come forward.”[34]

Loafing Oaf

So i'm guessing spriniging Andor is going to be the big story of the last two episodes. Suppose he'll have to manage it himself as he doesn't have friends with the wherewithal for a major op like that. Maybe Luthen & co will try to 'silence' him in prison and end up inadvertently setting him free...

Mr.Nice Guy

Anyone else think that Blevin chap is with the rebels? I think that's why he's been trying to thwart Dedra.