Just as Disney experiments with Marvel ventures, sometimes taking advantage of old successes but also changing styles to “trial and error” and squeezing characters to the limit, with “Star Wars” they have been doing their homework well, as has been seen in “The Mandalorian” and “Obi Wan Kenobi” where they managed to get Ewan McGregor to repeat one of the most successful characters in the saga, the original Jedi who in the 1977 film personified a giant like Alec Guinness. As Star Wars fans who received the new series as authentic streaming events well know, the level was excellent, but with “Andor” there is a range of details that renews and gives it a more dramatic turn, which is explained by a An important fact is that this new series is a prequel that tells the previous story of the only hero left alive at the end of the 2016 film, “Rogue One, a Star Wars Story”, directed by Gareth Edwards and written by Tony Gilroy, screenwriter of most of the films in the popular Jason Bourne spy saga (among other titles ranging from “The Devil’s Advocate” and a cult movie like Zhang Yimou’s foray into Hollywood, “The Great Wall”).
Between sequels and by-products of Star Wars, “Rogue One” is probably the best, as it brought together brilliant ideas in terms of plot, visuals and technique, telling the story of how the rebels took over the Star Wars plane. Death, the genocidal weapon that Mark Hammil, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness and Carrie Fisher had to stop in the first film. “Rogue One” drew attention to the logical dramatic seriousness in a story about volunteer guerrillas on a suicide mission: Gilroy’s coherence is absolute when it comes to telling the prehistory of the character, Cassian Andor, a violent and insecure subject, plus a fugitive from the law than a freedom fighter against the Empire.
Of course, this is a series from the “Star Wars” franchise so there have to be cute robots and tween characters. Like Andro’s R2D2 emulator, a kind of dented red mailbox that is urinated on by alien boars from whom he defends himself with a small electric prod, or a young boy who lives in a jungle tribe and murders astronauts with an Amazonian blowgun: the cultural clash between a spaceship and the tribe made up only of children, in the style of “Lord of the Flies”, is something that Werner Herzog could have thought of.
In “Andor” the violence causes bloody wounds -unlike the sabers that only got burns suitable for all audiences- and the lovers, in addition to kissing, have sex, and betray each other. Gilroy takes the Star Wars universe beyond film noir, but if science fiction had already played with that mixture of genres through Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” – there are also touches of Philip K. Dick’s literature here, but focused on his anti-capitalist stage of novels such as “Tiempo de Mars” – also mixes the paranoia of the Cold War and spy movies and describes a third world world where, on the borders of the Empire, workers are exploited by totalitarian corporations where fascism it is barely mitigated by corruption. Corporate officials don’t hesitate to exclaim things like “Outer planets need a strong hand.”
This is integrated into a non-stop story, in which Gilroy doses the dramatic tension with over-action, which when it explodes does so in a big way. The fact that the first three episodes are just over 30 minutes long and are all directed by one filmmaker, Toby Haynes (“Doctor Who”) makes watching them together feel like a feature film experience.
In addition to the captivating script about how Andor goes from being a smuggler and murderer to becoming a member of the resistance to participate in the robbery of the Empire’s armory – the one who recruited him into the guerrilla is Stellan Skarsgard, a kind of Jedi with a double life -, he also turned to the analogical technical strategy of the times of Lucas, without digital spaceships but rather magnificent scale models, just like what is related to the art direction that can go from a current third-world wardrobe to fascistic uniforms and lavish suits for bureaucrats.
With 11 episodes in this first season and the same for a second in 2023, “Andor” shows that Disney has perfected the art of turning Star Wars into a product for streaming.
Source: Ambito
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