If you’ve seen Les Misérables on stage, you’ll remember the point where the cast is singing “Do You Hear the People Sing?” and you can feel people around you holding themselves in their seats instead of jumping onto the stage to join the march. It’s that kind of fist-pumping, goosebump-inducing experience I envisioned when I heard about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the film that would reveal the days leading up to the original Star Wars. Gareth Edwards’ movie didn’t disappoint, with inspiring new heroes like Jyn Erso and Chirrut “I am the Force, the Force is with me” Îmwe. But did we really need more backstory than that? That was the two-season series Andor. I never thought Cassian Andor was the right choice to make a second prequel (ignoring all those other prequels). After all, the first time we met Andor was when he shot and killed an innocent rebel fighter so he could make a getaway. The first season of Andor (discussed here) was a muddled, meandering story that lacked intrigue and suspense. Instead of that boiling, slowly building pressure cooker in the ultimate striking back story Les Misérables that finally resulted in decisive action, this second season of Andor attempted to piece together a rebellion without brilliant strategies, smart people, or masterful planning. It seemed like this story had been part of some long-term plan from Lucasfilm that could have been re-thought. It’s a reminder that we don’t always need to see a backstory for everything we like.
But Disney stacked up Emmy Awards for the second season, so for all the studio cares, it walks away with this one in the win column. But Disney, Lucasfilm, and fandom can’t want what happened five years ago with the back-to-back releases of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and the first season of The Mandalorian. Every new aspect of your favorite franchise doesn’t need to be everything to everybody. As with every fandom, some people will like whatever is put in front of them. On the other side are fans with expectations and standards. Everyone else falls somewhere in between. One side of fandom didn’t like The Last Jedi so it avoided Solo: A Star Wars Story, which was unfortunate. For my money Solo is the third best Star Wars movie. I for one want more movies like that.
On the heels of the canceled Acolyte series and a depressing drama via the second season of Andor, aren’t fans ready for a return to the kind of Star Wars thrills that brought them to the franchise in the first place? I think it’s why we’re at a good point for the return of The Mandalorian and his sidekick “Baby Yoda” in next year’s The Mandalorian and Grogu. Even the circus-like atmosphere of three seasons of The Mandalorian and the characters’ return in the single season of The Book of Boba Fett are reflected in the initial marketing materials and first trailer for the new movie (previewed here at borg), including a carnival feel in the very font for the posters and trailer.
What made Star Wars so popular in 1977 was that the movie was a theme park ride, the ultimate rollercoaster. That original story told a tale of rebellion but it was more carefully, more masterfully told. Based in part on Akira Kurosawa’s successful film The Hidden Fortress, we didn’t need to see long details of the horrors inflicted by the villains to understand the plight of the victims. After all this is entertainment, not documentary, right?
After something so heavy it’s time for something lighthearted. It feels like something is wrong when the only decisive, strong-willed, determined, forward-driven character in all of the Andor series is Elizabeth Dulau’s Kleya Marki. She’s the real star. Cassian Andor seems to be there only to represent the idea of a Han Solo-type rogue. But what does he ever do? Where is his code? Why is he just another manipulated playing piece in the story? Disney’s Lucasfilm era has a strange habit of titling shows after what ends up a show about a secondary character. It would be as if The Great Gatsby was called The Nick Carraway Story. Obi-Wan Kenobi is really the Princess Leia origin story. Ahsoka is really just a sequel to Star Wars Rebels. Even The Book of Boba Fett might as well have been season four of The Mandalorian.
But Andor didn’t need to be the Kleya Marki story. We had a heroine ready for her story to be told all along. The elephant in the room for nearly 50 years that every fangirl (and fanboy) lived through with the original trilogy was the lack of women characters in Star Wars. How many hundreds of action figures has Kenner made (and is still making) that were male? First there was Princess Leia and Mon Mothma. I would have preferred a prequel series about the events leading to the original Star Wars movie that was written and directed by Jon Favreau than what we saw from writer/creator Tony Gilroy. Why? I can’t believe Favreau envisioned Mothma’s origin as an indecisive, ineffective bureaucrat. Kleya Marki’s story should have been Mothma’s story. In fact if we were going to see a character dragged through despair and the worst ravages of war–which is ultimately all that Gilroy relegated to Adria Arjona’s Bix Caleen–that could have been faced and lived and conquered by Mothma. If you were a kid in the 1970s and 1980s and envisioned a backstory for Mothma, didn’t you think she was once like Princess Leia, fighting her way out of a detention block, flying some kind of speeder across a jungle planet, or fighting Imperial stormtroopers head-to-head with some showdown at Ord Mantell? Just look at Genevieve O’Reilly’s previous roles (like in Glitch)--she could have pulled off more than the stoic royal.
Yet there’s something disconcerting about Kleya Marki. In a franchise that was at least initially aimed at ten- to twelve-year-olds, suddenly you must question whether kids can even watch a Star Wars series. We’re to the point where we’re cheering Marki as she becomes a mercenary after the death of her father (oddly enough in what is ultimately the best scene of the entire series): gun in hand, Marki shoots up a facility to get the critical information, the kind of thing that shocks the conscience in the real world of 2025. Sure, by this point nobody who works for the Imperials can claim to be “innocents.” But it doesn’t feel right as the climax, the pinnacle of a season of a Star Wars show.
Maybe Andor would have worked better if its framework was fixed in more of an Old West construct? The series is missing the tight direction and breathless scene-by-scene build of director Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a bit of a twist on Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven that re-ignited the possibilities for Star Wars after George Lucas sold it all to Disney. It’s also missing the optimism, the hope of Episode IV. Did anyone learn anything about rebellions in this series? With so much good content this year, it was easy to give up on the show to come back and try again later. Again, there’s a nugget of something interesting with Kleya Marki. The best episode featured her backstory and told the secret of her past, and the next best episode showed her taking action when all round her acted like buffoons. I didn’t get any of that Les Misérables vibe in Andor. Just despair. Not enough hope. In the end the good guys are supposed to win, right? Maybe the good guys just never get to stop fighting.
Did Gilroy just want to redo Edwards’ take on the prequel of Episode IV? One of the good things about genre tie-in novels is that many aren’t published as canon. Which means if you don’t like this telling of an event, just wait for someone else to write a better one. Star Wars tie-in novels are rarely treated as canon. I’d still like to read a tie-in novel of this event but with a better story.
Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael could have been more compelling. Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera continues to be an enigma. Even the Empire seemed strangely unfamiliar. All of the costumes looked like they were designed by the same costumer, which of course is the truth, yet that’s what designers are supposed to be avoiding. Adria Arjona’s Bix Caleen was a wasted character. Kyle Soller’s Syril Karn and and Denise Gough’s Dedra Meero were difficult to watch. Karn’s mother was even worse. Faye Marsay’s Vel Sartha was stifled. What fun is introducing a character with potential then not releasing it on us?
There’s the point. There’s the word. Fun. The key here is evidently nobody at Disney/Lucasfilm thought this story could be fun. And that’s what was missing. But entertainment that was always steeped in Saturday serials and space fantasy should be fun. That’s what Jon Favreau has had a better handle on in the Star Wars saga.
So bring on more Jon Favreau-guided projects. And bring on The Mandalorian and Grogu.
C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg
