Andor - Star Wars Noir Done Right

The last few years have been a bit rough  on Star Wars fans. With the exception of the first season of The Mandalorian,  almost all subsequent releases were either a creative failure or just another  mediocre addition to the Disney collection. The recent Star Wars trilogy had some promise in the beginning but it was  proved to be mostly disastrous Solo has already been forgotten from existence, and Boba Fett and Kenobi haven’t  exactly been beaming with quality. So, with all that in mind, I wasn

’t really  expecting all that much when it comes to Andor. Although I really liked Rogue one I never  saw much potential in the character of Cassian Andor. He was a stoic and grim assassin  that finds meaning in the cause of the rebels. His character arc was completed in the movie, so I wasn’t particularly moved  when the prequel was announced. I thought we were just going to get another  bland and mediocre star wars TV show. But after watching just three  episodes of the first season, I have to

say I was wrong. About everything. Andor is good. It’s more than good actually.  There are moments when it really shines. Andor is a grim and dark crime/political thriller about a small-time thief that  goes against the status quo. And in this particular instance,  the status quo is the empire. A brutal galactic-wide authoritarian  regime that is portrayed as a much more layered and complex institution  than the previous installments of it. And mostly that has to do with  the sheer quality of t

he writing. Tony Gilroy is a pretty good storyteller  and he has a knack for writing characters that are on the run from powerful  and shadowy authority structures. He did a similar thing when he  wrote the Jason Bourne films. Tony Gilroy takes a simple idea -a small-time  thief going against the empire- and elevates the concept into a multilayered story about  authoritarian regimes, corruption, loyalty, and strangely so, about the dangers of fascism. In the first episode, while  searching for h

is sister, Cassian Andor finds himself killing two  security officers that work for the empire. Although it would be more appropriate to call them rent-a-cops, judging by how  little authority they hold. The first cop was mostly an accident but  the second killing was clearly intentional. It shows that Cassian Andor is  not a man to be trifled with. The series might start with  the murders of the cops, but that’s not what really kicks off the story. What gets the gears rolling is when Cyril, the

  deputy supervisor of the security apparatus that governs the planet, is denied permission  to hunt down the murderer by his boss. The reasoning being is that it would  be too inconvenient to explain to the higher-ups why two cops that work for the  empire died in the red-light district. Cyril's boss cares more for what looks good  on his stats and not for the lives of his men. Cyril’s orders are to bury the murders  and make them look like an accident. Cyril, being a stubborn detective of sort

s, goes ahead with the investigation  and hunts down the murderer. And this is what forces Andor  to leave his planet and start working with Luthen, the shadowy rebel spy. The decision from the captain to bury the  murders of his colleagues, introduces us to the cold bureaucratic mentality of the empire. For the officers that call the shots,  people’s lives don’t mean much. They are just numbers, statistics on a form, and if the numbers don’t match, then  that can get people hurt or killed. And

it creates a blueprint for the whole season,  people in power deciding the fate of characters that don’t have much power to begin with,  pushing them to join the cause of the rebels. From the first episode, the criticism of  power structures in Andor is quite clear. The characters of the show are split  into social castes of sorts. They are the people that have power,  then there’s everyone else. Luthen, Mon mothma, Dedre, they all  live in different parts of the galaxy, and they want to achieve

different things, but the common thing between them is that they  all enjoy the privilege of wealth and power. These characters can make mistakes and receive very little or no consequences  at all for their actions. Luthen is untouchable, his identity as a spymaster  is secure at the end of the first season. Even if he has to let his own men die, so he  won’t betray the identity of another rebel spy. Mon mothma has to marry her  teenage daughter off to a less credible member of society but most

ly  she stays off the radar of the empire. Dedre demonstrates her cold bureaucratic  disregard for human life all season, but when her own life is on the line in the  last episode, Cyril comes along and saves her. Because he knows that’s the only way  to get his own life back on track. And thus get himself over the  line, where the real power resides. After the disastrous attempt to  arrest Andor in episode three, many of his colleagues died and Cyril lost his  job, and whatever little standing

he had with it. It was interesting that even  a higher-up security officer like him had so little authority or importance. Cyril could do nothing to alter his fate  because much like Andor and his friends, Cyril belongs to the wrong social class. The common thing between these characters is that they are unwittingly part  of a worker caste of sorts. These are people that have very  little connections and money and when something bad happens they can  find themselves in trouble quite easily. As i

t happens when Andor gets mistaken for someone  else later in the season and ends up in prison. This difference of social castes and how  much power they yield becomes even more apparent as the season progresses and we  get a better glimpse of not only the past and present of Andor, but how the rest  of the characters are affected by it. Andor has been a victim of  the empire from an early age. After some industrial accident that caused  a huge environmental catastrophe on his home planet of Ken

ari, Andor and some other kids were  forced to grow up alone and fend for themselves. And when later on the empire  came back for the cover-up, Andor was barely saved by Maarva, a scavenger  who later became his adoptive mother. Because of his difficult childhood, Andor has a strong disdain for authority figures and  the structures and the regimes that they serve. He wants to be free of any constraints that will  hold him down to one place or to one relationship. His sense of independence and in

dividualism  creates quite a lot of problems for his friends. He doesn’t trust people easily  and doesn’t stay in one place too long. After the successful heist in episode 6, Andor has gotten away with the  money, and seemingly all is good. But because the heist embarrassed the  empire, he ends up in prison. Not only because he was in the wrong place at  the right time, but because the empire needed to make some arrests, so they can  look like they were being tough on crime. This group of episod

es in the prison  is easily the best part of Andor. In the prison, the barefoot workers  are split into teams and spend most of their time constructing some  kind of machinery for the empire. The team that comes first gets more  food, while the one that comes last gets electrocuted for their troubles. Not by the  guards, but automatically by the floor itself. I really liked that the show doesn’t even bother  trying to make the guards be the bad guys. It maintains that the real villain of the sto

ry  is the cold bureaucratic regime of the empire. And what better way to represent that than by the  automatic and inhuman punishment of the workers. The loss of independence of action  and thought is always a danger when living under an authoritarian  regime. Especially inside a prison. And that danger is personified by the character  of Kino Loy, played brilliantly by Andy Serkis. Kino Loy is the supervisor of the  prisoners in his particular sector. He blindly follows orders, making himself

and his prisoners under his command another  cog in the machine of the empire. His misguided professionalism hurts the  other prisoners and he doesn’t really see it, not until the last episode inside the prison. He reminded me of the lead character in  the movie The Bridge On The River Kwai. There the officer was constructing a  bridge for the Japanese army during WW2. He felt so proud of his work. So proud of being a  descent soldier again, that he failed to recognize how he was helping the ene

my by building them the  bridge that would be used to transport their army. And that would end up costing  the lives of his fellow soldiers. For Lino Loy to wake up and see what he has  done in Andor, a whole floor of prisoners has to be electrocuted. And that pushes him  to join Andor and escape from the prison. The end of the first season finds Andor  joining Luthen and the rebel’s cause. It was not an easy decision.  No one forced Andor to do this. It was a choice that was very much simmering

  all season. Because Andor grew up alone and he has a strong sense of independence  and disdain for authority figures, Andor cared always for himself and was not  particularly interested in the society around him. But the show put him in a position where he had to experience the suffering of himself  and the others inside the prison. The loss of freedom and individualism  pushed him to empathize with the rebels, understand their cause and in the end join them. It was very refreshing to see a  w

ell-written character and story that doesn’t separate people in black-and-white  terms. Good guys and bad guys, Jedi and Sith, wearing bright and dark colors so  the audience can tell them apart. Instead, the show takes a new direction and  splits characters into people that have kindness, and people who don’t. And in a cutthroat world  like Andor’s that makes all the difference. Consider the character of Luthen. He’s supposed  to be one of the good guys. A rebel intelligence officer. But he wou

ld gladly sacrifice  Andor and all his friends if it gave him the upper hand up to the fight against the empire.  Characters like that are what make Andor special. Some details before I leave you. The  strong sense of individualism in Cassian Andor is also present in virtually all the  characters that are part of the worker caste. Their life might be difficult and hard but they’re proud people and they find  strength amongst each other. But for their counterparts, the employees of the empire hav

e a staggering lack of  independence of action and thought. They even get punished if they take the  initiative if it’s not pre-approved by their boss. All the scenes that take part in rooms  where the empire has full authority, look quite similar in style and tone. Bureaucrats and intelligence officers  all wear similar uniforms and work in dark gray rooms surrounded by endless cubicles. It’s like the show is trying to say that when  authoritarian regimes force people into conformity then those

people can lose part of their  independence and they can be easily controlled. Also, props to the show that they hired only native English-speaking actors  for officers of the empire. It connects with George Lucas’  decision when he used the same trick to make a comment about the  imperialism of authoritarian regimes. Although his films were mostly  about American imperialism, the use of the British accent in Andor works  well to differentiate between social classes. With the actors that play c

haracters in the worker caste speaking mostly a  variety of different dialects. In the end, I very much  enjoyed Andor. The politics between social classes was handled really well. The cinematography felt gritty and real, reminiscent maybe of Blader Runner,  especially in the first episode. We don’t get to see too often such a well-written  story with dark complex characters in the Star Wars Universe. Let’s hope the second season  is as good or even better than the first. So, that’s it for today

guys.  See you in the next video.