Originally published at: The trailer for "Star Wars: Andor" | Boing Boing
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Really confused here. Didn’t see a single blue-skinned antennae’d alien, even though this show is about their home planet?
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Just some random disjointed thoughts. Not saying any of this as snark or like I’m putting differing opinions down. With that said…
A.) The vfx look really purdy - getting a Blade Runner 2045 vibe from it and I like that
B.) Rogue One is my personal fav Star Wars film. A tight, contained story with interesting characters that have stories you WANT to know more about (hence this series I suppose). And they achieved that with a single film where basically none of the characters CAN be used in a future sense because, well… that explodey ending
C.) After nearly fifty years, The Empire has become a total non-threat, and yet every single movie revolves around the idea that The Empire is a galaxy-spanning unbeatable force… except the 11+ movies and a couple tv shows where it loses every time. Caught with its pants down every time. It feels like lazy storytelling at this point. When your Big Bad fails every time, are they really that big or bad? Give us new villains!
D.) My worry is this will be another Obi-Wan situation… I got about two and a half episodes into the show before I threw my hands up and walked away. Just one scene after another of pew pew pew, and light saber whah-wuhhh-woooh… one scene rolled into another but it felt like one long nonsensical dash through the Death Star… again. One long fight scene story stitched together with chewed gum and a whispered prayer
E.) I will nevertheless watch this show, so take what I say with a boulder of salt.
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Can anyone shoot and hit anything in this SW world? SW movies and shows typically have the worst shots and nobody taking cover (of course, with such rotten shots, cover is a non-useful concept).
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K2 to come later.
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Did we just glimpse a bungee jump off a dam ala Goldeneye?
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That looks promising! I love rebellion era Star Wars! Reminds me of the hours spent playing the West End Games Star Wars RPG, sneaking around, infiltrating the Empire, and causing a ruckus.
Have you ever watched any other action movie ever?
The good guys get hits, the bad guys miss or the good guys dodge just in time. They made 3 John Wick movies on the premise that no one can shoot faster or straighter than John Wick.
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About the only time this trope is ever countered is when it’s a gritty War Drama action movie re-creating scenes from a World War or Vietnam or (insert real conflict here) and deaths are more realistically depicted to play up either the heroism of the few guys who don’t die, or even more rarely, how shitty and wasteful war really is.
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Yes and that trope didn’t even really start until ~the 80s. Before that almost every war movie was sanitized and glorified. Not that movies can actually capture the reality of war fully, but at least a glimpse of it.
But action movies - space fantasy movies/shows - they are just that. They sacrifice realism for entertainment. Which is fine, IMO.
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I was surprised to see how many movies John Wayne died in, including a couple of WW2 films where he died unexpectedly of sniper fire. (Not that his films weren’t sanitized and glorified, because they clearly were)
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And the scene where Jar-Jar says “I’m the baby. Gotta love me”.
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I don’t think I ever considered those earlier war movies as actual realistic depictions of war, but instead just a deliberate form of nationalistic pro-war propaganda. I suppose the grittier stuff we got later on are also propaganda, but there’s some good examples that run counter to that aim.
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Ah - the old “oh man, we made it, and everything is ok” (Morgan Freeman voice) “But they weren’t ok.” trope.
Yeah, I think they killed off the heroes a little more in the old movies at the end to add gravitas. The above trope and this reminds me of The Green Berets with John Wayne, one of the first war movies I saw on TV, and I remember the guy at the end when they had gotten away fell prey to a booby trap. 
I also recently saw The Dirty Dozen where similar tropes were used - though it was expected most of them wouldn’t make it out.
As an aside, Lee Marvin’s voice reminds me so much of my Godmother’s husband, Hank. Old Kansas farm boy who served as an engineer on B-17s and B-24s in WWII. He had this low, booming voice like Marvin’s. Great guy.
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Maybe the Emperor was the good guy all the time.
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I think I agree with you on A, B, C, D, and E. Just not the rest.
Rogue One is my favorite as well. It was perfection. I am deeply concerned, though, that they will mess this up and this very appealing trailer is masking another “meh” of a series.
Didn’t just about everybody die in Bataan?
Calling them good would kind of ignore when, for instance, they casually murdered an entire planet full of unarmed civilians simply to punish one woman and terrorize the rest of the galaxy into submission.
Of course, that’s not really as far off from the Romans as one might have liked either. 
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As long as you overlook the slavery and genocide and infanticide and torture and so on.
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