Oh welp, a Disney Plus show that takes itself seriously? What witchery is this? AndorS1E1,2&3 Review

So the three episode premier of Andor just dropped yesterday, and I was very pleasantly surprised by what it had to offer, in a very good way I might add.

From the very beginning, the show sets the mood by its blade runner aesthetic and hyper realistic gritty look, and also, for long term star wars fans, there is something that many will miss, it says that this takes place in 5 BBY, Before Battle of Yavin, now battle of Yavin was a momentous occasion in the star wars universe, it was the Rebel Alliance's first big victory against the Empire, when a nineteen year old young boy of a moisture farmer from a small desert planet named Tatooine, performed the decisive trench run, blowing up the first Death star, and causing a huge set back for the Empire.

So obviously all of Star wars lore decided to time star wars around that incident, with the terms BBY and ABY, for example 5 BBY meaning, 5 years Before Battle of Yavin, and 1 ABY meaning 1 year After Battle of Yavin. Okay so what? In 2019, Disney changed this system to BSI and ASI, centering around the Destruction of the Star Killer Base Rather than the first Death Star.

P.s. I just love how this same article suggests the biggest plot holes in the epitome of Disney Star Wars i.e. The Rise of Skywalker

According to myself, and many others, this was a really dick move, because on not only are they saying that a movie that they made as almost a beat to beat copy of another persons work to replicate its success is more important than the original, there are also the undertones of the fact that BBY/ABY was just something that kind of happened as the fandom and creative team just collectively happened to start timing their Star Wars with the Battle of Yavin as a yardstick, whereas this was something shoe horned into star wars by the Disney Empire that bought this thing that many people loved and in the eyes of many treated it as a soul less cash cow at least in the Beginning.

Although with Shows like the Mandalorian and dare I say Andor, they are gaining back the goodwill of me and many other fans.

And them using 5 BBY instead of 39 BSI is a good start.

Now, after spending an ungodly amount of time on the onscreen text appearing within the first 1 and a half minute of the episode including the initial Disney Plus Logo, let's get on with the episode.

I mentioned that the show gave me a blade Runner Aesthetic, at least in the Beginning, but there is one more thing I would like to compare Andor too, another Franchise that is known for its futuristic neon environment and anti establishment undertones, one that many might not be aware of but Disney has recently decided to Revive with a visual novel game. Tron

Specifically Tron: Legacy, the Bar scene where Sam Flynn meets Zuse.

I took it upon myself to edit those two scenes back to back, look at the initial walk through the narrow hallway, with the upwards camera angle, plus the way the bar is set up with the white lights beneath the table, the presence of the oppressive police force, and the implication of corruption on them being in a brothel/bar while on duty, and then the over the top dressed and zany person that greets the main guy while dismissing other customers, providing a distraction, and how the main character is looking for a personal favor.

Am I looking into it too much? Maybe I am, but it can't be a coincidence that just a few days after they revealed their new Tron project, there is suddenly this parallel, can it? Maybe it can.

That's not the only parallel though, there is also the fact that the host betrays the protagonists later in the story both times.

Anyways, this review has to be extensive, so I guess it's time to create sub topics.

Motivation, Characterization and World building.

This show gets right to it with the story. Even though the main inciting incident for the greater plot happens at the six minute to nine minute mark, the first scene does a lot of world building in a subtle manner, via environmental and audio cues.

And then they immediately get into the motivation for Andor being there, his sister, and here it starts putting place the pieces for the inciting incident, the police officers getting blown off by the prostitutes and getting annoyed at Andor for... looking at them weird.

The inciting incident is essentially the officers abusing their power to get back at him, and in the ensuing fight, one officer dies and even though the other officer is ready for a peaceful resolution that appears to be the best for both parties, Andor shots him.

This is the main inciting incident. This leads to the three main story lines, Cassian (Andor) in present day trying to get rid of all trails leading back to him, him in flashbacks which tell the story of why him and his sister got separated

Throughout these we meet ten characters namely Andor, his sister, the main leader person of the group of children back on Kenari, his adoptive mother Maarva, Bix, and the townsfolk who in general play together as one character, Karn, a high ranking pre mor officer and another commander who is of a similar mindset to him. And then there is the mysterious buyer, who we are lead to believe is one of the Rebel alliance but there is a lot of mystique surrounding this character, so he could literally be anyone and I wouldn't be surprised if he was an imperial spy

I mainly want to talk about the characterization of Karn here, we know this guy, he is the overly serious by the books officer who we know is a fascistic ass and yet we can relate and understand his need and motivation to pursue Cassian as he killed two of his coworkers, and we get his willingness to uphold the law of the govt. he serves, if the script is flipped, this guy would be the Hero, even though we have the knowledge that the govt he works for is an oppressive empire, and the people he is getting upset over, absolutely deserved it. It is very important that this is the villain here but I will talk of that later.

And secondly I want to talk about Timm, Bix's boyfriend, it's clear Bix and Andor are close, as even though Bix hates the things she has to do for Andor, she does them anyway.

Tim on the other hand is an on looker from the outside, something he isn't too chuffed about being Bix's boyfriend and all, and so we understand his frustration at this other man who acts close to his girl and leaves her with a worse mood than before and yet she holds his friendship close, it makes him wonder if there is something else.

We too question whether he is right to feel this way, as not feeling trusted by your significant other can be a crippling fear, and with next to no lines from this man, we understand why he rats Andor out as being not from Fest but from Kenari, but in doing so, he also reveals that Bix trusted him most of all, as she told no one about Andor being from Kenari other than him.

I really like the subtle characterization in this story. So much told through just looks and expressions, through subtext rather than text, it's very refreshing see todays self aware, spoon feeding wave as studios seem to think more and more that audiences are idiots.

This is not limited to these two people, but I talked of them because good characterization and relatability on the villain side is much less common compared to the same on the Hero side, and it can really be an indicator of how good a story is, as often, villains become nothing more than an obstacle or plot device for the Heros to overcome.

But here in the case of Karn, by the end of episode three I almost felt sorry for him, as he is the one, who went against orders and brought a team to capture Andor, and yet you can tell he is the least experienced in this Arena while being the most motivated, he is, in a way, almost innocent, seeing the world in stark black and white, and naïve as he is unable to give an even mildly inspiring speech to his team, as clearly, this isn't something he thought of before hand, he must have thought it would be much simpler to handle a team.

And then? He has a gun pointed to his head and is forced to rat his team out as he gambles for his life, and when he has the chance to redeem himself by blowing up the transport he supposes the rebels are in, it turns out to be a trap, he cause the death of many of his comrades this time around, all in the pursuit of revenge for two he knew to be unpleasant and somewhat deserving of the punishment of death.

This ending scene with him looking at the wreckage of the speeder, is equal parts hauntingly beautiful and ominous as he realizes what this one man is capable of, and even though he must blame himself for all of this, he Blames Andor even more as facing the truth would be too much for him, and we as the Audience realize what thorn in the side of Andor this man is going to become moving forward, as we in equal parts hate him and feel sorry for him.

Cassian's friendship with Brasso is also very apparent as even though he owes the latter money, he choses to help Cassian out forming a cover story for him, ties a weight to the Preox ship preventing it's escape and tells Cassian to promise him that he will be back to work after whatever he is into is over.

In terms of world building, even though we are limited to only three planets at most, we learn so much about the greater world of star wars, when the prostitute at the brothel says, "no one uses their real name here" we ask ourselves, what does that mean? How many of these women are willingly here?

And when we see her helping the pre mor corporation, who we are made aware, considers the brothel to be illegal, we realize that this corporation who is outsourced by the empire to control an entire system of planets is equal parts hypocritical and pompous like the Empire, as they are sidelining one law break to fix another, as if the police brutality part wasn't enough.

And going over to Kenari, which is mostly seen in flashbacks during the clone wars, and mention a few times in present day, we can immediately see that everyone here is a kid, making us wonder, where they might have gone?

And then we see the abandoned mine, which is once again hauntingly beautiful to look at and ominous in its suggestion of what happened to the adults which is confirmed by a present day info dump that this planet was abandoned post a mining accident.

I think people forget that while the prequels paint the Confederacy of Independent Star Systems or CIS as the villains and the Galactic Republic as the hero of the clone wars, the Republic wasn't over thrown by the empire, it was turned into the empire.

And when we see incidents like this we start to see the Darker side of the Republic, and we also are Reminded that the CIS consisted mostly of the outer rim and mid rim worlds for a reason.

There is some debate on plot holes surrounding this aspect as later when Maarva mentions the Republic coming and killing the children, people are left confused, and also who exactly shot down the ship, and whether the people there were CIS or the Republic dressed as the CIS? Who knows. I mean the CIS logo is visible so...

This flashback part of the story is also my favorite as it chose to have the character speak voice lines only in their native tongue and give us no subtitles, so we are left to interpret things based on only tone and expressions and boy does this show do a good job with that.

we understand who the leader is, we get why Cassian copies her face paint as he is clearly into her, we get Cassian and his sisters relationship even though the only word we understand here is Cassian's name.

The fact that we don't understand a word and yet we get all these intricate details is important as I will talk about in the social commentary part of my review but first...

Music, Sound design and Editing.

Music and sound design will play a very important role in a show where so much of the world building and characterization is so incredibly subtle, I can go on for hours about how there are multiple Audio cues every time something is about to change both in the flashbacks and present time.

Especially the flash backs as there the dialogue is not meant to be understood by us.

I can talk about the music at the end montage with switches between six perspectives, that of Andor and the rebel guy getting away from the Preox Morlana corporation, Karn as he stands there, speechless at what he is witnessing, Bix who just lost her boyfriend when the last interaction between them was filled with anger contempt and hatred, and Brasso who with a simple look and a sip from a glass lets us know he doesn't regret what he has done, as if you remember, it is him that tied the ship with a weight to prevent it from escaping, and then this is intercut with a flash back to Maarva saving Cassian and that paralleling Cassian escaping in the present day. so much so that the intercut scenes give us information about both the present and the past at the same time.

And then cut to present day Maarva who is sitting all alone with B2 as she realizes that what she fears has come to life, she did always say, one of these days Cassian will get into trouble that he can't talk himself out of.

The music is what does the Heavy lifting in this sequence, there is next to no dialogue here and it is very important to make the Audience understand what has started and what the stakes will be moving forward and what this will mean for the star wars world moving forward.

Man I really didn't expect this much depth from the spin off of a side character of a movie born out of a throw away line in the original trilogy. For those who don't know, Cassian was in Rogue one which outlined how the Death star plans were secured and why there was such a glaring flaw in the Death Star, which was just a throw away line in a new hope, Cassian was a member of the team that did this daring task and died in the process, this spin off is his backstory. I'll get back to this later.

But no, I don't want to talk about this aspect of sound design as amazing as it is as that is not the actual unique part of this show, the real unique part of this show is the soundtrack being formed by environmental things and other characters, now of course, in isolation this isn't something we haven't seen before.

But...

Mid second episode we are introduced to this hammer guy, who essentially acts as a signaler for the whole town when its a certain time of the day, he enjoys his work, and that is very important as his clanging not only plays a mysterious back ground score to a certain scene, it also sets the tone for the current state of the town. Telling us that wherever the towns folk are, however they are, they are moderately happy(the man enjoys his work) and all is well for the town, everything is going well.

But then as the Preox Morlana corporation comes over, another metal clanging sound plays, this is a signal also, but this time its an alarm and an intimidation tactic to scare away the assailants.

This happens right after one of the people is attacked by outside forces, Maarva's house is searched by the Preox security forces and one of the characters just takes up a metal object and starts hitting a tail pipe with it, seeing him, two more people start to do the same, and this spreads through the town like wild fire, creating the battle soundtrack for the climax battle of this three part premiere (I would like to say premiere movie as it really plays like one.)

Like the earlier clanging this too is a voice of the people, but where as the earlier was a single person signaling everything going well, this is the people as a Unit sounding the alarm as shops and businesses close down and everyone unanimously partakes in this city wide task, doing their job of warning their fellow citizens of the oncoming Danger.

It signals the unity of the townsfolk, which is what the Preox forces do not understand and mistake for a siege as one of their ships crashes destroying their only escape.

But other than that this also signals a reckoning, as Maarva says, you want it to stop but it doesn't it keeps going, but it's when it stops when you should fret and it's true that's when the final ending scene takes place which I gushed about earlier.

but you know what, the fact that this is metal on metal also means something, there are the obvious industrial workers rising up parallel, as these planets are controlled by the Preox Morlana corporation and then there is the fact that metal on metal clangs often signal a near by battle.

When it comes to editing, this show has some interesting choices.

this is just before the first flash back, and my immediate response was, this seems seamless, which I wasn't sure was the best choice, and apparently I wasn't the only one, I often make it a point to watch reaction videos in my research to gauge the audience response somewhat, and many of them commented on this, and said that like me, they would have preferred to be given the knowledge that this was a flashback and assumed like me it was a mistake.

But by the end our error becomes abundantly clear as the show uses intercutting to tell both the stories simultaneously and interweaves their themes and makes parallels.

That's all I have to say for now, now to move on to the best part of the series for me.

The extremely subtle socio political commentary

So remember when I said that it was important that the villain was characterized in the way that he was. Here is why. Back in the nineties and early two thousands, police dramas often put as the protagonists, cops that were the outsiders, and those who didn't always play things by the books and broke a few laws and went outside orders to get the job done.

In the end the ends of the criminal being caught justified the means, no matter how harsh, what muddied the waters is that often times these criminals would be vigilantes and then the only difference between cop and offender becomes their badge, and these shows seemed to double down on the idea that the badge is what justified their actions.

Now before going forwards let me acknowledge that there are often times even in the real world that the systems put in place often beak down and can't get the job done, in such cases going beyond orders and innovating become necessary, however as an officer of the law, innovation can often come with a heavy toll and very few shows show both sides of the coin, leaning heavily either to one side or the other.

Not Andor, don't get me wrong, Karn is a villain, and we are to root against him, however, when he stands there, tall and proud having modified his uniform to look better and staunchly claiming that if he doesn't loose a few nights of sleep at the death of a coworker then he doesn't deserve the uniform, we get him, we understand his frustration at a lousy superior who just wants to push the matter under the rug, and in a better system of law(not a dictatorship) Karn would be exactly the kind of model officer everyone should strive to be, the one who does everything by the book and yet does it efficiently. The only problem is of course, this is the book of the empire.... it's kinda shit.

Even the seasoned superior is a commentary on how corporations treat those who work for them and how little they care for anything other than money, because the motivation for the superior telling Karn to let it go is not because they thought that the two of them deserved it, to be clear, they did think that way, but the real reason is because it will affect their margins.

Karn is once again justified in going against orders here, because what the superior is suggesting is shitty, and the truth needs to be out there, and yet you side with the superior, cause you know he is right, or maybe you don't no one knows... in todays world of super heavy handed, spoon-fed, oversimplified and super in your face socio-political commentary where often a show is literally stopped to tell the audience x thing bad, it is great to see such complexity in a show and to know that none of this pulls anyone out of the show, its all in service of the greater narrative of the plot and its very entertaining to watch. And that is important because shows are watched by people as a form of escapism and entertainment, reduce that and you loose the audience.

Let's talk about the two police officers in the brothel/bar, the ones who harass Cassian later. Obviously they are meant to represent the corrupt and dark side of a law enforcer, the bar itself is an enigma, as we do know it's probably not legal, and as I mentioned before the line, no one uses their real name here, makes one wonder how many of the workers are willing.

There is even a blink and you miss it line where it is implied these two shouldn't have the money to come here, and yet, did they deserve to die? Probably... we don't know. That's left to the audience to interpret, this show doesn't take grand stands, it often just presents a situation and let's the audience decide, anything that happens in the show is diegetic i.e. strictly due to internal forces of the show, no ones hands are clean and no one is a straight up villain... that's great because that's how real life is.

Let's take one more example.

Maarva saving Andor, here is something that truly reflects the complexity of this show, Cassian is from an indigenous people. The death of all the Adults in a mining disaster reflects the desecration and destruction of smaller culture by the over arching government.

Then when it comes to Maarva, she is closer to the galactic center and hence she is better off and from a more industrialized culture, she is a rogue who is here to steal republic tech, her saving Cassian even though it comes from a good place and genuinely Cassian would have died if she hadn't taken him.

But there is a sub text to this, a white savior complex, because she did take him away from his culture and he had to leave his sister behind and I'm pretty sure he didn't like that, especially because this is something that worries him to the point of putting himself in danger, but these are not the villains, many shows suffer from as I said before bland commentary, and once again this show proves why it has given me such high hopes in the first three episodes.

Now there is just one thing left to talk about, something, which I am sure many wonder as to why it wasn't higher up in the characterization section.

The philosophy of Droids.

So the droids, I seriously debated putting this in the characterization section but in the end I decided that this needed it's own section.

So, why is that? I think at this point droids are a pretty staple part of the star wars universe, but why were droids introduced in the first place? contrary to popular belief, the first droid at least was not introduced just to show technological advancement, I am sure that was one of the reasons, but I am pretty sure in a less technological universe, something else would replace them, and why?

Well because in an interview George Lucas mentioned his reasoning behind keeping R2D2, he mentioned the concept of a mcguffin, how it's basically something the characters care for but the audience doesn't, these objects are mostly present in spy movies where characters often chase after these mcguffins to prevent "the enemy" from gaining access to them and any advantages they might provide.

He hated this idea and he mentioned that things that are cared about by the characters should be cared about massively by the audience. And so what did he do? Well if we think back to the first May 25th, 1977 Star Wars, we see that the main mcguffin of the story is the Death Star plans, which will decide between a decisive victory for either the Rebel Alliance or the Empire.

But what happens to the death Star Plans? Well they are given to this cute Pet-Like Droid called R2D2.

So what does this change about the movie? Well imagine if instead it were given to a random person.

It would never have the same impact. For one in R2D2's case, he is a droid and therefore not a life form, and so there are no life forms on this pod, cease your fire.

Sorry, I know it's been memed to death, but seriously, why did these two not fire on the escape pod, just for safety. Anyways, sidetracking aside.

The point is, that if R2D2 weren't a droid than either this scene would be even more absurd, or whatever replaced R2 wouldn't be able to move around and act as a character. so It's a healthy balance really.

But the other thing is, if it were a person, they would garner much less care from the audience as we tend to have a more instant liking to cute pets rather than to humans, funny how that works, and also in that case the plans themselves would be a separate entity to the character themselves, making it a more traditional mcguffin, so even if the Audience were to care about the character they wouldn't care for the plans. unless they like stored it in their memory or something... but that's a separate discussion.

In R2's case, the movie is able to, with minimal work garner care from the Audience with his pet-like appearance and constant cute beeping noises, and so by proxy the Audience that cares about R2D2's safety cares for the plans themselves, adding that extra bit of joy when the plans are received by the Rebel Alliance, notice how the plans are never separated from R2 until they actually stop being a mcguffin.

Now, this philosophy was later changed by George Lucas himself when he introduced the Droid Army of the Confederacy of Independent Systems or The CIS combat Droids.

In this case it was a clever flip by George Lucas to take something that was, at the time, generally considered to be associated with something positive and cute and to make them, kind of the primary threat for our protagonists to face.

Since then, over time droids started to become a representative of servants, capable of taking orders and performing tasks but often not treated the best, and sometimes just things that people can kill without any moral consequences.

There were also instances when they were portrayed as members of the working class which wasn't really on the nose but started to become so when Disney took over, I mean who doesn't remember L3-37

Yeah Disney's activism is shit, what a fresh opinion.

Anyways what does the droid do in this show? Well this time around he is a combination of all of these versions of Droids, he is his own realized character this time around who knows how to fend for itself which we see in the beginning when it shocks a hound to stop it from peeing on it.

This kind of goes in the L3-37 version of things but... less annoying, also Cassian, treats him as a friend, a younger brother almost, and Maarva often treats the droid as a child, where as the security team from the Preox Morlana team treats the Droid as an object, when they order for its power supply to be removed.

It is of course something that can take orders and perform tasks, though often it runs out of battery, and has power and lag issues, and there isn't a time when its a threat but the factor of it being a cute dog like thing which is used to make the Audience care for things they usually don't is there, because the Droid mostly delivers exposition about the characters, but does it in a cute and comedic fashion that covers up the fact that the Audience don't care for it.

I would go so far as to say that there is a chance that B2EMO becomes the modern R2D2, too far? You b-b-b-be the judge.

For me Andor is a Return to form of sorts for Star Wars, often times Star Wars get stuck in conversations of which is the good side and which is the evil side, but people don't get that, in the Prequel Era, the CIS were actually in the right, they consisted of Outer Rim systems that were neglected by the Elite mid rim and center Star Systems, so much so that a Trade Federation could blockade them, and the Jedi were very much responsible for their own downfall, they were stifled by tradition, pompous with their position in the Senate, and too deep into politics, not to mention when you think about how they trained child soldiers and put them in binding contracts which forbade them from showing emotions.... yeah.... Remember, the Republic Became the Empire, it wasn't overthrown by it.

And in the OG trilogy Era, yes, the good and Evil is more clear, but then, do we forget that the Death Star had millions of employees who were probably just doing their Jobs and didn't know any better? Did it need to go absolutely, but while a lot of lives were saved, a lot of families sobbed that day. Don't get me wrong the casualties and intentional destruction pile up way more for the empire, and there is the little fact that its a... dictatorship... but no ones hands are clean in a conflict, and Andor lays out the Darker side of the Rebellion out bare in a way that it has never been before, and we like the Rebellion and Andor as a character all the better for it.

Life isn't about Good and Evil, sometimes hard decisions need to be made, people get hurt, sometimes both sides are Justified in a conflict... that's what this show brings to Star Wars, at least so far, and I hope it continues to do so... because I love it.