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Tag: Andor

  • ‘Andor’ Still Manages to Follow a Traditional Star Wars Template

    ‘Andor’ Still Manages to Follow a Traditional Star Wars Template

    If you’re familiar with Star Wars, or with many other literary and cinematic works such as The Lord of the Rings, The Wizard Of Oz, Iron Man, The Matrix, Lost or The Lion King, you’ve come to be pretty familiar with the a common template of stories, hero myth pattern studies popularized by Joseph Campbell: The Hero’s Journey, also known as the Monomyth. While divided into several steps, all of which are incredibly flexible, it has three main parts that can be easily summed up as 1) The Separation 2) The Initiation 3) The Return. These are the fundamental components of each Hero’s Journey, and they can be applied in a number of ways to strengthen, examine, and develop vastly different narratives on vastly different subjects.

    With the first three episodes of Andor having been released, it becomes clear how Cassian’s journey has, for now, managed to fit the steps of the journey included in The Separation. It’s interesting to notice how a show with such a tonal departure from the most recent set of Star Wars properties, still manages to capture the essential spirit of the franchise. With little to no bells and whistles, it demonstrated that there are a number of valid approaches that can be taken when developing a project within this universe, as long as the true foundations that led to the franchises’ success are still addressed and given room to serve the story being told.

    • Ordinary World

    The first step isn’t as much a step as it is a starting point. Although it may be hard to qualify Cassian’s life when we find him as ordinary, it is still the life that he has become accustomed to. Living in Ferrix, scouring the galaxy for his long-lost sister. His attempts to lay low when traveling to other planets like Morlana One are obvious, all things that help to clearly define the world he lives in.

    • Call to Adventure

    The moment when he must decide whether or not to take a step outside his comfort zone, in order to answer the appeal of his inner quest, comes when Cassian, still on Morlana One, is faced by the two Pre-Mor Authority employees. By deciding to engage them, and later to kill them off in order to leave no witnesses, Cassian clearly goes beyond his initial mission statement and, even if inadvertently, sets in motion events that will lead to him leaving his ordinary life behind.

    • Refusal

    While making preparations to leave Ferrix for good, Cassian decides to meet with Bix Caleen’s contact, Luthen Rael. Someone who initially was to only serve the purpose of handing Cassian the necessary credits to follow through with his intentions of leaving his life behind, ends up offering Cassian something more: the opportunity to fight the Empire not as an individual, but as part of something greater. Cassian, being true to himself, initially refuses to do so, questioning Rael’s true reasons and how futile such an endeavor would be.

    • Meeting with the Mentor

    This is also the moment where Cassian, albeit unbeknownst to him, meets what is sure to become an essential figure in his forming years as a Rebel intelligence officer. Luthen Rael demonstrates to have a special interest in Cassian, admiring his capabilities and basically offering himself to provide him with all the tools that will allow him to become the fighter he was always meant to be.

    • Crossing the Threshold

    When leaving Ferrix, Cassian is overwhelmed by memories of him leaving his home planet of Kenari, knowing that his life is about to change, maybe even more than it did then. At this point, Andor genuinely enters the domain of adventure, stepping outside of his world’s known bounds and into a perilous new world with unknown laws and boundaries.

    The next step.

    Following these initial steps in the Andor storyline, and if the Hero’s Journey is to continue, Cassian will undergo an Initiation of sorts, where a Road of Trials will come before him, as he proves himself worthy of continuing on the path that The Separation has led him down. It will be interesting to understand how the way his story develops in Rogue One will affect the way Andor’s structure over its two seasons is approached. Will Rogue One serve as a metaphorical Ressurection and Return, or will those final steps be addressed in the series with the movie serving as a worthy epilogue to the story of Cassian Andor?

  • ‘Andor’ Showrunner Wanted to Make the Disney+ Series Feel “Real”

    ‘Andor’ Showrunner Wanted to Make the Disney+ Series Feel “Real”

    Andor is the latest Star Wars series heading to Disney+ but it’s taking a different approach this time around. We’re set to explore a new corner of the ever-expanding galaxy, as we move away from the many legacy characters and take a look at what this universe was like under the ruling thumb of the Empire. Instead of a former Jedi Master, we return to Diego Luna‘s Cassian Andor who offers a more grounded look that many fans may have not seen yet.

    In the official press conference for the Disney+ series, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy offered a glimpse of how they tackled the series but also highlighted how they couldn’t have truly shaped or even attempted this project without the Star Wars fandom behind it. They are not only making it for those that love this franchise but also exploring a more “real” part of this universe.

    That’s what gave us the money and the momentum and the ability to make a show that’s this insanely big, I mean, this abundant and this difficult to make. That audience is our primary concern, and we want to bring something to them that is a completely different lane than what they’ve had before, but we’re doing it in a completely uncynical fashion.

    Tony Gilroy

    He goes on to highlight that very “uncynical fashion” approach they took with the series to make it stand out from the rest, especially in how they wanted to build it up for the community.

    There’s nothing cynical about our show. The word we use more every day, and I was at Pinewood today prepping for two, is real. We want to make this real. This place is real to us. And we will bring a lot of things to that community that we hope they’re really interested in, and we hope they really appreciate it, and we hope they really appreciate the passion that we’ve tried to make it real. At the same time, it’s no secret.

    Tony Gilroy

    It’s definitely an exciting prospect to take the fantastical realm of Star Wars and take a more grounded look. Moving away from the Jedi and Sith that made it famous, we get a closer look at a much harsher world that lives under the thumb of a ruthless Empire. It feels like the Rogue One prequel was the perfect jumping-off point for Tony Gilroy to build upon. With a second season on the horizon, here’s hoping this might also set a new direction for the franchise.

  • Tony Gilroy Teases ‘Andor’ Season 2 Details Ahead of Series Premiere

    Tony Gilroy Teases ‘Andor’ Season 2 Details Ahead of Series Premiere

    Lucasfilm’s newest Star Wars streaming series, Andor, debuts with 3 episodes on September 21st but before fans have seen an episode, creator Tony Gilroy is already teasing the show’s second season.

    Season One of Andor is comprised of 12 episodes that span the course of one year in the life of Cassian Andor and detail how he came to be a key piece of the Rebel Alliance and the plan to take down the Death Star. Through the first four episodes shown to the press, nearly a dozen characters new to the Star Wars universe were introduced. According to Gilroy, that’s just a fraction of what’s to come over the remaining eight episodes and many of those characters are headed to Season Two.

    What’s cool is that we’ll be introducing new characters in the second half, but there’s 25, 30 characters of import that we’re carrying forward from one to the next. You already know them, you already know a lot about them.

    Tony Gilroy

    The second season of Andor, which will also consist of twelve episodes, will find a Cassian who Gilroy says will have made “a commitment to the Rebellion” by then, allowing that season to “explore a bunch of different things.” The second season will be uniquely structured to allow every three episodes to cover one year in the life of the characters. By the end of Season Two, the timeline will have caught up to where fans first met Cassian at the beginning of Rogue One. As Gilroy puts it, by the beginning of the second season, “time becomes our friend.“

    Read our full review of the first four episodes of Andor, which begins streaming tomorrow only on Disney Plus to find out how Cassian starts the journey that leads him to the Battle of Scariff.

    Source: Total Film

  • Review: ‘Andor’

    Review: ‘Andor’

    Lucasfilm played it safe with its last two live-action Star Wars projects, centering them around two of the franchise’s most well-known characters in Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi. While the responses to those were a mixed bag, the attractiveness of the characters to even the most casual of Star Wars fans can’t be questioned. The same can’t be said, however, of their next live-action project, Andor. A prequel to 2016’s Rogue One, Andor doesn’t have the luxury of banking on a beloved character. Instead, it looks to be an expansive dive into a time that has proven to be fertile ground for storytelling: the early days of the Age of Rebellion.

    Andor begins in 5 BBY and immediately immerses the audience into a galaxy where the rapid expansion of the Empire has impacted planets and people in ways that are both eerily familiar but also rarely explored in the Star Wars universe to this level of detail. The 5 BBY setting means the story of Season One of Andor takes place concurrently with the opening of Season One of Star Wars Rebels and with Jyn Erso’s mission to Tamsye Prime on which she was abandoned by Saw Gerrera, an incident that caused a rift between the two as seen in Rogue One. Unsurprisingly, the first four episodes of Andor look and feel like Rogue One while also starting to share the same sense of urgency and impending darkness that effused from many episodes of Rebels. So while the first four episodes explore a time period that isn’t entirely new, they take the audience to brand new places where they meet brand new faces with nary a cameo in sight.

    And it is the introduction of new places and new faces that will frustrate an impatient audience while no doubt drawing comparisons to another series that took its time in exposition to build a robust world in which any number of stories could be told: Game of Thrones. Creator Tony Gilroy uses the first four episodes to introduce an impressive roster of new characters that inhabit all sorts of different corners of the grimy, lived-in world already seen in Rogue One. The Game of Thrones parallels seem almost deliberate, from the heavy dose of characters with British accents of some kind or another to the time taken to explore the new characters in moments that don’t seem to steer the plot in any particular direction. Most familiar to GoT fans though will have the feeling that many of the characters seem like they’ll probably be important down the road, though through four episodes it’s not quite clear why…or on what side of things they’ll eventually fall. Imagine never having read the GoT books before watching the series. Without prior knowledge, the audience would never have known what to expect when seeing Ramsay Bolton appear for the first time. Andor puts the entire audience on common ground here, unable to know which of these new characters they’ll come to love or hate.

    Of these new characters, Stellan Skarsgård‘s Luthen Rael makes the biggest impact on Cassian and the course of the story. Rael is a major player in the earliest days of a Rebellion that is still coalescing. A man of action who believes the time for talk has long since passed, Rael brings Cassian in on what looks to be one of the Rebellion’s first major moves against the Empire. And while he strives to push Cassian to bigger and better attacks against the Empire, he does so from right under their noses on Coruscant where he puts up appearances as an antiquities dealer. It’s here where his relationship with another major character in the series, Genevieve O’Reilly‘s Mon Mothma, plays out. Rael’s duality as a man willing to get his hands dirty while also working in the gleaming center of the Empire makes him one of the series’ most interesting characters and also places him somewhere firmly between Mothma and Saw Gerrera on the spectrum of Rebel-ism.

    The series has been billed as a spy-thriller and the first four episodes serve to gradually ramp up the requisite tension for what promises to be an unnerving final 2/3 of the first season of the series. As Rael’s plan unfolds, Denise Gough’s sharp Imperial Security Bureau Leftenant, Dedra Meero, has already started to track coordinated movements and believes that the Empire should be concerned with what she sees as a growing threat of an organized rebellion. Though Meero’s efforts to dive deeper into the threat are frustratingly shot down by her superiors-and even her equals-at every turn, she’s clearly not ready to give up so readily. Meero, along with Kyle Soller’s overly-ambitious Syril Karn, whose overreaching cost him both his job as a corporate security officer on Ferrix and a great deal of embarrassment, are certainly primed to work as the series’ main antagonists. With the outcome of the story already known to audiences, it remains to be seen how Gilroy and crew make these characters matter, but the answer to that may just be in how they eventually help shape Cassian Andor into the more fully-developed character first met in Rogue One.

    To that end, Diego Luna’s efforts in the first four episodes of Andor are noteworthy. It’s no easy feat for Luna to go back and flesh out a character whose death takes up a portion of the screen time dedicated to promoting the series, but Luna does it well. When audiences first meet him in Andor, superficially he’s still the same rough-edged character, willing to pull a trigger to save his own skin. Over the course of the first four episodes, however, it’s clear that Luna is playing a different version of that same man. This version of Andor is scrambling through a life he didn’t choose for himself and is still on the path to becoming the man who, as Rael says, will “give it all at once for something real.” It’s easy to get the sense that after watching two seasons of Andor, Cassian’s death following the Battle of Scariff will hit much harder.

    In Andor, Gilroy has put together not only the most ambitious Star Wars streaming series to date, with its willingness to bank on less beloved characters to tell the story of the inciting moment of the Rebellion that changes the galaxy but also the best-looking streaming series as well. From the opening scene, it is immediately clear that this isn’t a Volume-made VFX spectacle. Gilroy’s choices here create a world more akin to Blade Runner than anything, one where the layers of the characters are developed by the layers of the society in which they live and operate. It’s incredible what can be gleaned about the Empire, the growing rebellion, and the way life in this galaxy really plays out in 40 minutes or so. In fact, there’s so much to take in that the series may play better to audiences on a second viewing.

    It’s foolish and impossible to judge the quality of a 24-episode story after viewing just one-sixth of it. However, it can be said that through four episodes, Andor dares to do something that immediately stands out among Lucasfilm’s streaming efforts. Without a single major cameo and barely a mention of anything connected to any other projects (a little Scariff here, a little Ryloth there), Andor is a series that is willing to bet on itself. It’s willing to bet that the story it has to tell is one that will add to the overall mythos of the Star Wars universe and is willing to do so on its own merit. And through four episodes, it digs its claws in deeply enough to make sure you’ll come back to see what’s next.

    Andor begins streaming on September 21st with a three-episode premiere.

  • ‘Andor’s Diego Luna Teases What Sparked His Interest to Return to Play Cassian Andor Once More

    ‘Andor’s Diego Luna Teases What Sparked His Interest to Return to Play Cassian Andor Once More

    Andor will be another pre-A New Hope prequel for the Star Wars franchise but is taking a very different approach from Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s moving away from heavy legacy characters and offering a much more grounded tale by exploring the dark past hinted at by Cassian Andor during Rogue One, which also had a much more grounded take on the galactic adventure.

    It seems that very fact was also what inspired its star, Diego Luna, to make his return to the franchise. In the official press conference for the series, the star got a chance to talk about what drew him back to the role and it seems that the possibility to re-explore his character’s past beyond the limitations of the film’s original runtime led to his excitement for revisiting this world.

    That, to me, is really interesting to know. He talks about a dark past. He talks about doing terrible stuff for the Rebellion. What is he referring to? I think that story matters. That story is interesting. And there is a lot of material there for us to play. So I was really excited to be able to go into that journey and give those answers, you know?

    Diego Luna

    In regards to the “material” mentioned, we’ve learned at one point that the original plan was to make five seasons that would explore a year in his life with each season. Yet, it seems that they realized that would be quite a time investment and decided to spread it out more evenly throughout two seasons, which will be interesting to see how they handle that balance throughout it’s run.

  • ‘Andor’ Showrunner Hints at Season 2 Release in 2024

    ‘Andor’ Showrunner Hints at Season 2 Release in 2024

    We’re only a few more days ahead of the release of Andor, the latest Disney+ series to release and further explore the Star Wars galaxy. We’ve known for a while that we’ll also be getting a second season, which will likely start production soon. As it turns out he’s expecting to start production by November according to showrunner Tony Gilroy in an interview with The Wrap. Even still, we shouldn’t expect the release until 2024.

    I have two more years to go. We start shooting in November on Part 2. And I don’t know if … Our past pattern was two years, but I mean, I’ll be on … We’ll shoot from November to August. And then our post[-production] last time was about a year.

    Tony Gilroy

    In an interesting tidbit during the interview, Gilroy hints at the fact that this might be the most time he’s ever spent on a franchise as he tends to jump from one project to the next; highlighting how dedicated he is to this project.

    This is the most home I’ve ever made. I’ve always had a very nimble approach to this. I never take a job in front of another job. I’ve always just done one thing at a time and moved around and never made a company or got a letterhead or I never had a production deal or anything. This is the longest I’ve ever spent anywhere.

    Tony Gilroy

    It’s definitely motivating to see that the project has Gilroy wanting to spend as much time as he can on it. His initial idea for Andor was originally going to consist of five seasons which would highlight just how excited he was to tackle the project moving forward even as he compressed the idea into two seasons.

    Source: The Wrap

  • ‘Andor’ Showrunner Praises Impressive Set by Former ‘Chernobyl’ Production Designer

    ‘Andor’ Showrunner Praises Impressive Set by Former ‘Chernobyl’ Production Designer

    Andor will be the first Disney+ series to take a step away from the Volume, which has become quite popular by many productions during the pandemic. Of course, it made sense considering that it helped work around the restrictions set by COVID and some countries closing their borders. Still, The latest Star Wars series ist focusing a bit more on using real sets to highlight the grounded aspect of what the project has to offer.

    In the official press event for the Disney+ series, Tony Gilroy got a chance to talks about the sets that were built for this series. They had production designer Luke Hull attached, who also gave us the chilling Chernobyl, and teased the “eight-and-a-half-acre city” they built for this production.

    You know, we talked before about the set and the thing that they were talking about, our production designer Luke Hull, who did Chernobyl, I mean, he really is in the brain trust that puts the show together with Sanne and Luke and Leo, my brother John Gilroy, Cathy, the core group of people that put this together. I mean, Luke is just, I mean, he’s Mozart, and he’s a young production designer, and he’s just soaring. And they built an eight-and-a-half-acre city for us that we will use for all 12 episodes.

    Tony Gilroy

    He also goes on to highlight how it helped them build an entire community around the set that brought this world to life. So, it’s not just establishing a practical set for them to film in but also ensuring that they have a chance to create a living community that changes across the timeline they hope to tell in this story.

    And as they said, it’s a 360 set. And the community that we were allowed to build within it and the social structures and the rituals of it, because there are some really intense rituals about it, it really feels like a place, like what is it? You get to play God. We built a place, we built a whole culture, we built a whole life, we built a whole tradition, we had people care about it and anyways. It’s a fantastic maximal expression of imagination to be able to do this. It just fantastic to be able to do it. It’s thrilling.

    Tony Gilroy

    Tony Gilroy certainly knows how to sell his series, and it’s exciting to see how they make use of this set. It’ll also be interesting to see how they showcase the change of this community throughout time. We’ll have to see as the three-season premiere releases on Disney+ on September 21st.

  • Tony Gilroy Explains the Inspiration Behind ‘Andor’

    Tony Gilroy Explains the Inspiration Behind ‘Andor’

    When Rogue One: A Star Wars Story debuted in theaters in 2016, no one expected to see the series continue years down the line. Especially not leading man Diego Luna. However, Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote Rogue One, had an idea on how to expand upon Cassian Andor’s story. During the virtual press conference for Andor, Gilroy was asked about his inspiration behind the Disney+ series, and the showrunner explained he wanted to be able to showcase the complexities of the character before the events of Rogue One.

    I think the main idea is we have a character in Rogue One.  And we know where he ends up.  And we know how accomplished and complicated he is.  And the idea that we can do a story that takes him literally from his childhood origins and walk him through a five-year history of an odyssey that takes him to that place, during a revolution, during a moment in history in a place where huge events are happening and real people are being crushed by it, the fact that we could follow somebody as an example of a revolution all the way through to the end, that was the walk-in for me. 

    Being able to showcase Andor and his life leading up to the revolution was ultimately the selling point for Gilroy. While the series has a ton of characters, including some we’ve already met previously, the series ultimately focuses on Andor and the difficult times and decisions that are made leading up the events of Rogue One – just on a “big canvas.”

    And Gilroy isn’t the only one excited to be expanding upon the character of Andor. Luna was quick to note how much he enjoys working with Gilroy, who he calls someone he admires, and how exciting the prospect of Andor is because it’s not just about a specific event.

    First of all, just the chance to be back working with this family, getting to do more stuff with Tony, which is someone I admire, and I love his company and, and collaborating with him is amazing.  So just being back felt great.  But I think Rogue One is a film about an event, you know?  You don’t get to know those characters.  You don’t get to understand exactly where they come from, what needed to happen. 

    Luna

    Star Wars: Andor will debut with three episodes on September 21st. The remaining nine episodes will then drop weekly on Disney+.

  • D23: ‘Andor’ Season 2 to Start Production Soon, Described as 24-Episode Spy Thriller

    D23: ‘Andor’ Season 2 to Start Production Soon, Described as 24-Episode Spy Thriller

    D23 has finally kicked off its second day with a big showcase starring some of their biggest additions, Lucasfilm, Marvel and 20th Century. While they are strategically keeping some of the big announcements for later, Kathleen Kennedy kicked off the event to tease the upcoming Andor series and teased that Season 2 is set to start production soon and described it as a 24-episode spy thriller. So, we can expect a very different type of Star Wars show. She teased that showrunner Tony Gilroy has also added his usual Bourne “tension” during thee event which sounds quite promising.

    Source: Twitter

  • ‘Andor’ Creator on the 3-Episode Premiere and How it Inspired Their Season 2 Approach

    ‘Andor’ Creator on the 3-Episode Premiere and How it Inspired Their Season 2 Approach

    We were caught off-guard when the first season of Andor was going to premiere in September with not one, not two but three episodes. While we’ve had a two-episode premiere in the past, this was quite the surprise for many when it was first revealed. Most assumed it might be to make way for what else is released on Disney+ throughout the rest of the year, but it seems that there is even a story reason for this decision.

    In an interview with Variety, Tony Gilroy revealed that the reason they decided to release three episodes is that they were written and directed by the same team. Not just that, but it also is a single story arc that unfolds throughout these three episodes. So, they purposefully didn’t want to break it up in its premiere which also became their base structure for how they attempt the second season. It is also why the first and second seasons each consist of 12 episodes, as three episodes would cover a certain amount of time in the next season.

    They want to explore five years in this story, but their original plan to have it unravel with one season per year just wouldn’t make it, as production would take too long. So, Andor‘s first season covers one year broken into story arcs while the second season will have three episodes cover a specific amount of time. So, it’ll be interesting to see how it balances multiple years in a single season with this same approach.

    Source: Variety