april 2025 thread because andor 2 is coming and it looks fucking dope

[sonatine]

april 22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE4wxt70aUM


pretty fucking stupid soundtrack and its still got forest whitaker attached but somehow it still looks promising.

[sonatine]

going to drop in 3 episode chapters ever week, which is dope.

[gimmick]

So Andor got kinda screwed and Gilroy couldn't fix his own script.

The original script (at some level of finish) was planned for 5 seasons, with each season lasting a year and finally catching up to Rebel One. The 1st season followed that plan, but didn't do well enough for 4 more seasons. The way to "fix" that was by crunching the remaining seasons into a single final season, because reasons. It appears that because of lack of time s2 is mostly built out of cut pieces that are patched together to create a somewhat coherent story.

Now season 1 could have been tighter, but not 4x tighter. You can't keep the writing style with similar worldbuilding and characterization, if the whole thing is only 3 episodes long. Anyways it appears Gilroy wanted to keep the established characters and their arcs in some form with few scenes he liked while also adding the random comic relief scenes, few flight scenes and 40 easter egg average per episode.

The above is my best guess how the 1st 3 episodes of s2 came out the way they did. Random SA scene at this point is mostly just tanking valid criticism. We can all pretend that Leia was never a sex slave since it's not explicitly mentioned. It's a perfectly reasonable assumption that she was merely a pet or an ornament who just happened to be wearing a metal bikini and a collar. Not in my Star Wars.

[gimmick]

Next 3 episodes improved a lot. If we split the seen episodes to 5 arcs, my current ranking is roughly Prison, This weeks batch, Aldhani, Ferrix and Wedding whatever (from best to worst).

I started rewatching s1, because of random mentions about both seasons starting slow. I liked 90% of the s1 Ferrix arc. I'm still cutting maybe 10-15 minutes from the whole 120 minute arc, but in general the show is rolling smoothly and most of it doesn't feel too slow. There's 8 minutes of random jungle flashbacks that i'm always cutting. That bit of backstory is just too detached from everything else and the parallel gimmick just isn't worth the screen time.

Things like the double hammer bell ringer dude i would still keep. It's a good excuse for a high viewpoint of the stage and it servers a purpose in making a relevant place feel real.

Oh and the show apparently cost $600+ millions. It never would have pulled the numbers to justify that. In the first few days s2 start got 2 million views. I'll write more about the show once we're past spoiling it for any late viewers.

[sonatine]

god i havent even started it yet, im such a coward

[sonatine]

have we discussed that 'the waif' from GoT is in this? fucking love her.

[gimmick]

have we discussed that 'the waif' from GoT is in this? fucking love her.

She was ok.

I never followed up on s2 comments, since there's not that much you can say without spoiling things. Ep 7-9 were better, maybe better than the Aldhani arc, but still the second worst 3 ep batch of s2. Some people though rated them higher and even said that they made the first 3 eps worth the drudge, but I don't really agree with that.

In the last 3 ep batch had my favorite episode of the whole series. It's not really it's own arc in similar way how the last two episodes of s1 weren't. They just wrap up the season. S1 had more room for that where 4ish episodes were not part of any of the 3 distinct arcs.

[sonatine]

im 3 eps deep on season 2 and so far it really seems like disney turned this shit to straight disneyslop. what was a terse cold war sci fi spy series is now just another goofy space beneton ad for toddlers.

the moment i felt well and truly fucked on this was the wedding. absolute a5 wagyu disneyslop. a completely senseless ritual that somehow we, the viewers, are expected to be breathlessly amazed by. zero relevance to the show, its themes, or its message. just a bunch of space whites doing space white shit. gwyneth paltrow probably wrote that whole scene.

everything is a situation, and every situation feels like a dumb fucking skit. the only character who seems to be holding her own is that woman who almost got raped by the space nazi. so far her writing has been quite good and shes a good actor.

everything else feels like a bad game of chess.

[sonatine]

oh shit ep 4 back to form alert

[sonatine]

so this might be the first time ive ever seen anyone get a good performance out of forest whitaker. i also think the direction they gave him was literally 'just go out there and be sun ra'.

honestly those first 3 eps suooooouuuuuucked but 4 and 5 banged. i actually heard some discussion about how theres this huge disparity in quality with some of the eps because covid blew up their plans and they had to stuff everything into a much smaller timeline and you can totally see it, with the time jumps and weird tangents, but again things seem to be settling in and im pleased.

[gimmick]

Yea 4-6 batch was really good and Whitaker bit was solid. I don't even know if you need to watch 1-3 to enjoy them. The 2 min recap at the start of every episode mostly covers everything relevant. In those recaps the jungle bit is never mentioned and the wedding gets 1s and 2s clip, where those 2 were like half the screen time of ep1-3.

The whole wedding thing started in s1, but Mon Mothma parts were some of least important for the season. I think the wedding could have worked if they had a full season to work with for that year. With 5 seasons I'm ok with Mon Mothma getting 100 mins or so, but with 2 seasons I think i would have cut her out or gave her 10 mins. The reason for the characters special treatment comes from a 27s bit in the 3rd original movie and having a small part in Rogue One. On her own she's maybe the 11th most interesting character in Andor.

[sonatine]

ep 6 done and yeah this shit is great again. really incredible 3 ep win streak. something to be proud of in this day and age i suppose.

something ive been thinking about is the legendary vibe check about how much of star wars is directly lifted from dune and in a way i feel like this show has much more in common with dune than star wars, to the point where i wish disney had IP rights to some corner of the dune universe that they could riff on for a decade or two.

[sonatine]

i love to imagine gina carano watching this and being like "YEAHHH AND THE EMPIRE IS THE WOKE MIND VIRUS"