Star Wars: Andor (September 21st, 2022)

The Buffinator said:

A 14 year old boy’s brain isn’t fully formed yet, so his opinion is of no consequence lol. As I used to tell my son when he was that age, “When I want your opinion I’ll give you one”.

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I am SOOOOOO using that line….ALOT lol

Mandible said:

If Jaws was released today (and we'd never seen anything like it before), it'd still be a flop because it's essentially a story about characters - not the shark. I remember seeing Jaws at the cinema when I was 6 and loving it (still to this day a masterpiece), but I know my kids wouldn't be able to get through it (or appreciate it on any level).

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THE Masterpiece of our Era.

Wor-Gar said:

THE Masterpiece of our Era.

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Isn't it ironic that if Bruce had have worked properly, it potentially could have been a laughable dud?!

Mandible said:

Isn't it ironic that if Bruce had have worked properly, it potentially could have been a laughable dud?!

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I remember reading The Jaws Log as a kid and thinking how cool it was that Spielberg wanted to have the shark do so much more, but yeah -- even with Steven's talent, "too much shark" likely would have made the film his "1941" early in his career. I think he even realized in the editing room how much better the film worked with less shark.

This series continues to floor me. The ISB has all but figured out their opponents, and there is true concern as to how the protagonists will succeed. When was the last time villains were written to be so competent (especially within Star Wars)?

And as mentioned before, Denise Gough is killing it. Dedra ended up more of an imperial Gus Fring than Moff Gideon himself

Pfft silly Gideon running around with his darksaber and droids.

Give me Kino Loy saying never more than 12 guards on each floor over that any day.

ISB supervisor Dedra with her Death Troopers are my most anticipated figures from this show right now.

goatchumby said:

This series continues to floor me. The ISB has all but figured out their opponents, and there is true concern as to how the protagonists will succeed. When was the last time villains were written to be so competent (especially within Star Wars)?

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Disney Star Wars? Never I think is the answer.
I'm so pleased they made the Empire a real threat in this show.
If your villains are constantly shown as incompetent idiots, the level of threat of a Saturday morning cartoon bad guy, how can you have any stakes or tension? When the hero's succeed, what kind of victory is that?

Johnny Utah said:

Pfft silly Gideon running around with his darksaber and droids.

Give me Kino Loy saying never more than 12 guards on each floor over that any day.
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That was so wonderfully done.
All the time we've seen him, Kino has been the jailer's pet. So afraid, desperate to protect himself and survive to his release.
Fingers in ears la la la, nothing is happening, I'm being released soon.
Andor nagging and niggling him, trying to get him to answer his questions etc.
He refusing, so afraid, lying to himself that everything is OK and he's going to be free soon.
Then finally, what happens happens. He learns what happened to 2. He finally sees and realises.
"Never more than 12 guards"
Everything that response signifies for the character.
A huge impact, and no action, no blaster fire, just a well written character, dialogue and good acting. One of my favourite moments from the show so far.

I’m really impressed with the costuming and sets for this show. Still thinking about the ending of that last episode.

Johnny Utah said:

Pfft silly Gideon running around with his darksaber and droids.

Give me Kino Loy saying never more than 12 guards on each floor over that any day.
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Well, I won't go that far, since I luv Mando most of the time (will never forget how HAPPY I was when Mando made an appearance in Boba; fantastic episode)

But my hope is that the quality of writing and performances in Andor makes all the writing for other shows up their game. I hope other writers and directors who have been kinda lame are watching and taking notes.

Set designers too, tho I don't have any complaints about Mando. BTW some YT guy thinks what they are making is the undercarriage of Viper probe droids but dunno.

The Nielsen ratings have been released for the third week of Andor. They're awful. Despite having 5 episodes available, the viewership dropped from 485 million minutes viewed the previous week (with 4 episodes) to 356 million.

I said that I wanted to wait to see the trendline compared to the other shows because I expected a much better retention of audience and eventual pickups. I was dead wrong. Not only did the audience fail to grow from Week Two to Week Three, but it actually shrank by more than 25% with an extra episode to pad the total. That's just horrendous.

What a complete bummer. If there isn't some sort of dramatic audience turnaround, I can't see this sort of tone and overall storytelling getting much future support from LFL/Disney. It irritates me to no end because this show isn't doing any of the things that so many fans had been complaining about with Disney Star Wars, and yet fewer of them are watching from week to week. The better I think the show gets, the smaller the audience gets.

…and that ^ is Star Wars for you. Should something good be a popularity contest?… in our current tik tok only fans disposable world …the answer, sadly is HELL FRIGGIN NOOO!

Don't sweat these ratings hand-wringing articles. Not only is this show different than any of the other SW offerings from D+ at this stage, it's also being "consumed" differently too. Good word-of-mouth, be it in social media or the old fashioned way, can go a long way towards generating long-term interest in this show. It may not generate those hot "first day/week" numbers, but the good feedback coming from old SW fans who are enjoying the heck out of this should give it a long shelf life. And by good word-of-mouth, I don't mean the usual social media screeching that usually accompanies any new show or movie these days. Heck, if Andor really has a low interest on social media, it could be because the chorus of WTF posts that went with the Sequel trilogy and the last two shows is mostly absent.

It's already getting a second season and that's been well-documented to be "it" for this story.

Look at how the opposite is happening with movies (especially Marvel ones) these days...the shill-influencer "press" gets their look and gets to release endless "initial impressions" tweets and posts about how fantastic what they just saw was, usually sprinkled with the same buzzwords like "emotional" "inclusive" or whatever other the crap word of the day is. They clutch their bags full of worthless whatzits they get from the premiere and soak up the seconds of exposure they get on social media. Then....real people see the movie or show and discover what a POS it is. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Disney Star Wars has been slowly leeching the life and interest in this franchise with an endless parade of "product", designed only for buzzy gotcha moments and to provide content for the streamer. Is it a wonder that when something of genuine quality finally comes along, it's met with apathy by both SW fans and the general public? "Wolf" has been cried so many times, it's hard to imagine how many folks consider SW something that "used to be good" instead of something to be excited about.

Long gone are the times of waiting for a premiere night outside a theater with a bunch of like-minded crazy (but fun) fans.

Maybe Andor is just too late. I just know I'll keep watching and enjoying it to the end.

Andor fans when Disney decides to nuke the idea of doing such strong narratives due to current ratings:

ajp4mgs said:

The Nielsen ratings have been released for the third week of Andor. They're awful. Despite having 5 episodes available, the viewership dropped from 485 million minutes viewed the previous week (with 4 episodes) to 356 million.

I said that I wanted to wait to see the trendline compared to the other shows because I expected a much better retention of audience and eventual pickups. I was dead wrong. Not only did the audience fail to grow from Week Two to Week Three, but it actually shrank by more than 25% with an extra episode to pad the total. That's just horrendous.

What a complete bummer. If there isn't some sort of dramatic audience turnaround, I can't see this sort of tone and overall storytelling getting much future support from LFL/Disney. It irritates me to no end because this show isn't doing any of the things that so many fans had been complaining about with Disney Star Wars, and yet fewer of them are watching from week to week. The better I think the show gets, the smaller the audience gets.

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We've all said it before, but if Disney SW had have started with this sort of tone and craft with the beloved characters, I think this style would have had a far better chance of success.

The problem is what I said from the beginning... the average person wouldn't even know who Andor was. It's a 6 year old character that was in 1 moderately successful film. Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo. 45 year old characters, that are foundations of modern pop culture. Say any of those names to 99% of people and whether they love or hate SW, they've heard of them.

As much as we all want to see the universe beyond the main characters, I think there will be an ongoing theme of failure around a lot of these upcoming/slated project that don't feature them.

(...and don't use The Mandalorian as an example of success - without Baby Yoda, it might have been a moderate success at best. But that "gimmick" transcended SW fans and reached audiences no one thought possible).

As depressing as Andors numbers are, I think the show will have long term staying power. It will only gain love as the years pass. BOBF, Kenobi, sequel trilogy etc will be ignored more as time goes on, like the holiday special and Ewok movies before them

Not all shows/movies find an audience straight away, there are plenty that find a following soon or long after release.

It’s “free” to watch on D+, I’m sure new people will be checking it out every day, and word of mouth is a powerful tool; tell people to watch it, they don’t need to like Star Wars

jaztermareal said:

As depressing as Andors numbers are, I think the show will have long term staying power. It will only gain love as the years pass. BOBF, Kenobi, sequel trilogy etc will be ignored more as time goes on, like the holiday special and Ewok movies before them

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Indeed. Remember The Shawshank Redemption didn't have first the success it has today, now being considered one of the best movies ever.

It's already highly regarded by most SW fans. That's a rare thing since no one hates SW more than SW fans.

jaztermareal said:

As depressing as Andors numbers are, I think the show will have long term staying power. It will only gain love as the years pass. BOBF, Kenobi, sequel trilogy etc will be ignored more as time goes on, like the holiday special and Ewok movies before them

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It’s funny I forget Andor about 20 seconds after watching it. Although I must admit the numerous scenes of Syril eating his cereal while his creepy mother lectures him are nail-biting stuff. I don’t agree at all about the some kind of ignored masterpiece that time will recognise, if you’re into this kind of sci-fi (I hesitate to call it Star Wars) then you’re into it, if you’re not then the passing of time will make no difference.