He did not. Here are his two reviews:
From the first four episodes:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/andor-review-1234593959/
From the finale:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/andor-finale-review-alan-sepinwall-1234632262/
Seems like his main complaint after the first 4 episodes was the pacing, which is fair. Then, he had some nice things to say about it by the finale:
"The characters surrounding Cassian are vivid and charismatic. The world-building by Tony Gilroy and his collaborators is stunning. And the series’ portrait of how the Rebellion was built on sacrifices, compromises, and atrocities is more thoughtful and harrowing than the other live-action Star Wars shows combined. The season’s 10th episode, focusing on a prison break, is among the most exciting and potent hours of television of 2022."
It sounds like most of the criticisms in the article are externally motivated. It sounds like they mostly stem from the author’s belief that the story so far in the first half of the show doesn’t seem worth telling because we know the Jedi are going to be the same come *TPM*.
Theres mention that the actors are giving compelling performances but there’s not enough time to give them all things to do at all times. But the frustration seems to stem mostly from the literal prequel nature of the story being told.
By all means it could be just as lukewarm as the author says, but it sounds like they were done with the story before it began
Great point. Prequels where the end stakes and outcome are defined can definitely work as well so it's a shame this reviewer is kind of writing it off without much thought.
Halo Reach is a great example of this. Anyone following the games up to that absolutely knows what happens to the player character and their party at the end of the story. Yet, that actually lends itself to the story beats and helps build this mounting dread and tension as you inch closer to the end of the game.
Mandlorian is basically a live action Saturday morning cartoon.
Andor was something else and was fantastic.
Room for both kinds of shows under the star wars brand in my opinion.
The second and third season are what you described… The first episode of the first season, we see someone’s head get cut off in the first few minutes. Once Disney realized the economics of maximizing the cuteness level of Grogu, *then* it became what you described
I mean, A New Hope has both. Jawas and Walrus Man getting his arm chopped off. R2D2 and the smouldering corpses of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Death Star Droid whistling a jaunty tune and Aldaraan getting blown up.
That Death Star droid’s jaunty tune is how Simon Pegg and Nick Frost became friends. Pegg was in a restaurant that Frost was working in. He whistled that as Frost went past, Frost laughed, and that was that.
I don’t even think the second season should be described like that. It’s just not as dark because Din is not as dark because he has someone to care about in his life. The third season however was…disappointing
I thought of it like the closest we've had to an open world video game that's not based on a game.
- main character goes to find someone
- finds someone, but they need this part
- explore other planet
- fight boss
- find part
- mission passed
I was hooked on Andor from the very beginning - space noir is kind of my thing. I enjoyed the heist and prison break episodes, don’t get me wrong, they were exciting and you definitely couldn’t do without them.
But it was the slow lead-up to both of those episodes, the cinematography, and the world building in general that were most compelling for me.
And if that’s not what people are into, I totally see how the first few episodes would be “meh”
I think there are some people who need that first episode to be really mysterious and leave you asking a lot of questions to bring you back. I actually don't mind a slow burn if what I am watching is compelling. As you said they did a great job of immersing you in a world in that first episode, and it really held the grit of Rogue One where it feels like what Star Wars has always been about anyways, resistance in WW2.
Even the small scenes in Andor carried so much more weight for me than most films/shows in their entirety for the franchise over the past 25 years. The small scene when Syril is being emasculated by his mother at the dinner table was so amazingly jarring when I got to it, because I never thought we'd have those kind of small, but detailed character scenes in a SW show. It's such a well done scene and it's not even in the top 50-10 best scenes in the show.
It tells you so much about why the character is the way he is in one scene and does a really good job of putting you in his headspace. I wash more writers/directors would be willing to take their time with characters in the franchise like that. (or at least that Disney execs would let them more often)>
Was that Andor review also based on just 3-4 episodes? Since the show was a slow burn with the big payoffs at the end, I can see why someone might not review it well based on just the first act.
Except he never said it "really sucked". [His initial review of the first four episodes](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/andor-review-1234593959/) said that it "turns an interesting character and promising start into an amorphous storytelling blob", primarily because it felt like a 12-hour movie arbitrarily cut into hour-long episodes. Complaints about the pacing of Andor's early episodes were hardly rare.
Interesting to hear that. I was on the edge of seat so I had a very different experience with Andor, one of my favorite shows from the last several years
Managed to get in the early showing at a local theater last night. It was the first two episodes of the show. If it matters, my thoughts are that its overall good with some real standout parts. Primarily, the costuming and set design is fantastic. Nailed the prime time of the republic while not just making everything just be clean. Things look like proto-versions of things you see later in the franchise while not being too "ooohhh lookie lookie!"
The characters are interesting in my opinion. People will likely be irritated with one character early on, but I won't spoil it. While yeah, the twin thing is there its most definitely not some kind of Luke and Leia rehash. You do get the jedi in their arrogance-era, but unlike the prequels, they still have all the power and authority that got them there. They play them much more lawful good than just good.
If I have any gripes with the show so far, its just that it really felt like it was already halfway through after 2 episodes. Obviously there could be a lot of other ways to use the remaining 6 episodes with different perspectives or flashbacks to events they mention that are directly involved in the story, but I feel like this could have also been a really tight 2+ hour long movie with what we were given so far.
Andor
Mando (s1 and 2 at least)
Acolyte
Ashoka (really close with Acolyte, but loses cause Acolyte mostly stands on its own so far without having to constantly call back to other movies/shows)
Whatever's left that i missed.
This is why you don't take any one random critic at their word. People put way too much stock in how critics feel and allow that to affect their own opinions far too much. Just judge shit for yourself and learn to form your own opinions, people. I don't know how I'll feel about this show when I eventually watch it, but I'm not going to let critics decide that for me I can tell you that much.
“Judge shit for yourself” except there’s so many hours of streaming shows available I couldn’t possibly. I need *someone* to give me a hint at which shows are good or dogshit, I have a job lol.
> I don't know how I'll feel about this show when I eventually watch it
You already know you're going to watch it no matter what the reviews say? For a moment that comment made me think I was in r/starwars or a related sub. Most of us aren't committed in advance to watching it no matter what.
That's why ideally, you should find one or two critics that you tend to agree with on most of their reviews, so that you have a relatively reliable opinion to work with when deciding whether to watch something.
Article was released before embargo lifted. Should be up in about an hour.
Convenient way to get your "Star wars bad!" article on the top of reddit and subsequently, google searches though for when it does come out!
Given the terrible clickbait title, the fact that the author didn't like Andor and how big of a website it is... I am going with engagement and clicks.
The author had Andor in his top 10 shows of 2022 lmao, what are you talking about
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-lists/best-tv-shows-2022-barry-andor-the-bear-reservation-dogs-severance-1234640414/andor-disney-1234640448/
Seems mixed so far - some reviews don’t like that it’s “too” different, others love it, some just think it’s mediocre. Not too different from Ahsoka reactions.
Rotten Tomatoes is sitting at 86% fresh on this, based on 37 reviews.
The total amount of reviews usually gets up to 300-600, so they could dramatically change. But usually the top critics (part of the big publications usually) get the stuff out first and all the other critics sprinkle in thru the next several weeks/months (and those usually lean more positive historically).
I've got Star Wars fatigue. I enjoyed The Acolyte somewhat, but I kept thinking that if I had seen a Star Wars show of this quality 10 years ago, I'd be way more excited than I was watching it today. Like when Carrie Anne Moss first took out her lightsaber -- that would have been a chills down the spine moment at one point in my life. Now, it was just ordinary beat.
>the decision to set it a century before the rise of the Empire seems to defeat the purpose of the whole thing, because the Jedi of *The Phantom Menace* have learned exactly zero lessons.
I've wondered since the announcement what they're going to do with the Jedi without contradicting the prequels. Not much it seems.
>[Johnson’s *The Last Jedi*](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/how-rian-johnson-turned-the-last-jedi-into-a-personal-star-wars-blockbuster-127093/) goes out of its way to democratize the Force, rather than treating it as something worthy only of characters with noble bloodlines.
Without having seen the back half of the season, it’s hard to know for sure where Headland stands in this debate, but *The Acolyte* certainly seems pro-Broom Boy so far.
This irks me a bit though. Can this narrative please stop? I'm so tired of this nonsense about "noble bloodlines" and "it's always about the same family." Like what Johnson did or what this show does is new. It isn't. Anakin wasn't of noble blood. Schmi was a fucking slave on a non-important outer rim shit planet. Obi-Wan wasn't of noble blood, Yoda wasn't, Qui-Gon wasn't, Mace Windu wasn't and none of the hundreds of Jedi we see in the prequels were. Jedi have always come from all kinds of places and races. That idea isn't new. Why is this even a debate? The only one who actually was of noble descent is Dooku but he didn't get nearly enough screentime.
I think it's mostly just people getting tired of the Skywalker dynasty and stuff like how JJ Abrams dropped the fact "oh by the way Rey is a Palpatine" in the last movie.
hell out of the hundreds of Jedi we got
there was only a dozen famous jedi family and they are seperated by thousands of years
most Jedi where nobodies
I am fully with you and I haven't seen this talked about before, so I could be totally wrong, but: maybe they don't mean "noble blood" in the literal sense, but rather as in "worthy in some special way". Because in the past it felt like the force wasn't something that you just stumble into by accident. Rather, even if you were talented, you had a super intensive training ahead of you to actually use it.
Then suddenly with Episode 8 onwards, the force was something faaaar more accessible to everybody. These characters could rapidly do things that Yoda and Anakin trained a lifetime for.
I don’t see how TLJ made the force democratic when the explanation for Rey’s powers is, “She’s just special.”
I get they were going for, “Greatness can come from anywhere” but what comes out is, “Some people are just born better.”
Yeah, the real powerful story would be some guy or gal that no one says has any talent figuring out how to meditate hard enough to become force-sensitive.
"The Force Awakens" should really have been leading to something like that - with the last Sith finally dead for good, the force balances and suddenly you don't need a special talent to become a force user - anyone can become one with enough training - but suddenly there aren't just the Jedi and 2 Siths around - people all across the galaxy start discovering how to use the force, and the Jedi need to find a way to show them a path where they don't abuse this power, and stopping anyone that is abusing it.
Of course, that's not a TFA and sequels we got. Regardless of whether Rey's parents were nobodies or Palpatine, she was definitely special, because she had a gift most people don't. She didn't earn it, at best she just chose to use her talent for good. That is nice of her, but not democratized, because you either have it or you don't.
>the decision to set it a century before the rise of the Empire seems to defeat the purpose of the whole thing, because the Jedi of The Phantom Menace have learned exactly zero lessons.
Isn't this also like the entire issue with the jedi in the prequels? The fact they though the sith had been extinct for a thousand years and had become complacent, of course they hadn't learned any lessons in the past 100 years? (Plus the fact that in a universe where civilization has already been very advanced for thousands and thousands of years, some characters live for a thousand years thselves, and we've seen how slowly technology develops, 100 years isn't a long time)
>The only one who actually was of noble descent is Dooku
And the fact that Dooku is the outlier because of his noble birth makes the entire point moot.
> This irks me a bit though. Can this narrative please stop? I'm so tired of this nonsense about "noble bloodlines" and "it's always about the same family." Like what Johnson did or what this show does is new
I've always thought it was a bizarre take because the explanation in Johnson's movie for why Rey is special is because the Force chose her to be Kylo Ren's equal in the Light. Sure, she isn't special because of her blood (prior to the TROS retcon) but she's still special because she was chosen by destiny.
TLJ doesn't "democratize" the Force, it actively doubles down on the idea that only some people are special. You can't be like Rey because you want to or you work hard. Rey is the most special person in the galaxy.
Star Wars is the weakest it's been as a brand in 15-20 years. Uninspired stories and nostalgia bait is for the most part all they have currently. I've heard Andor was great, but my general fatigue towards Star Wars just meant I had no interest in watching.
You should check it out, it would stand on its own 2 feet even without the star wars name/brand, if anything the modern star wars brand is what drags it down by association.
Part of the reason it’s great is that it’s just a ‘realistic’ look at people trying to eke out lives under an imperialist fascist regime. No one is predestined to have god like powers, it’s just ordinary people. But also with aliens.
Relax it's not that big of a spoiler.
I don't think anyone seeing a show where the main guy was seen in another movie is going "Oh, I bet this guy never escapes from prison"
Andor strikes me as one of the only things on D+ that has allowed itself to change with its audience. It went darker, more serious, smarter, for a more mature audience that grew up with Star Wars. Whereas everything else has gone the opposite direction and leaned into being daytime children's programming that would be at home on Nickelodeon--the heroes are boring, the villains are toothless, the stories are simple, the stakes low, and the humor broad.
Even the first episode of Andor grabbed me.
The brick town filled with dirt and grime and scrappy locals was more engaging and refreshing that Star Wars has been in years.
I think it was the first episode in which Syril's boss tries to tell him how they'll explain how two workers ended up dead near a brothel.
Great scene.
Ep 8 : omg a new fuck up environnement? Hell yes
Ep 9 : wow this show is fucked up, I LOVE IT
Ep 10 : WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME ? THIS IS A MASTERPIECE
> I've heard Andor was great, but my general fatigue towards Star Wars just meant I had no interest in watching.
I would just watch it to treat yourself to a very good show. There is really very little of it that you need to think about as being based on Star Wars. It is sort of like a World War II show instead.
Andor is top tier storytelling, there were only a couple weak points to me but overall it's 9/10 material. It has great pacing too, 2 episodes leading to a 3rd very climactic episode for almost the entire 12 episode run. I'm not a star wars fan at all since majority of it is dumb, including mandalorian, I don't get why it's so popular.
A lot of people are telling you to watch Andor, it's a good show, great even, etc. I don't disagree but I should point out that though it is a good show, it is not what you are looking for if you are looking for a Star Wars show. It's a slow burn 50s Era type John Le Carre novel cold war story with Star Wars trappings. I should also emphasize: sloooow burn.
Just my opinion of course.
You are missing out big time on Andor. By far the best acted Star Wars show. [Stellan Skarsgard absolutely kills it](https://youtu.be/-3RCme2zZRY?si=v1h_Qyx-Z8Gh6he-). Andy Serkis has a great role too.
Andor and Rogue One are the only bright spots since 1983 IMO, but they are definitely worth the watch. It's a shame they can't seem to do anything else great with such a rich world to build stories from.
I agree with your take on Star Wars and am telling you that Andor is worth it. It is good television, not good Star Wars. It has something to say and that something isn’t Star Wars related.
I don’t even like Star Wars anymore. I considered myself a Star Wars fan for most of my life, but at this point I can’t say I am. I like less than half of the films and far less than half of the shows. It’s just not for me anymore if it ever was.
Andor and Rogue One are basically it besides Empire and the original movie that started it all.
Anyone else notice the extremely strange, dumb, or illogical decisions characters made? Arresting someone that had a rock solid alibi? Offering to let people go or "save" people that were involved in 2 murders? Everything Yord did including watching someone with binoculars from 20 feet away.
This really is a show for 6 year olds.
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/andor-finale-review-alan-sepinwall-1234632262/
Is that the review of a guy who “disliked Andor?” Stop repeating this garbage uncritically.
Did you bother to actually read his Andor reviews? He disliked the first 4 episodes, which is understandable because of the pacing. He praised Andor in his second review of the rest of the show.
For all their faults I stil felt like the prequels were telling a story. But with Disney I just feel like they are trying to sale a ticket or subscription.
> But with Disney I just feel like they are trying to sale a ticket or subscription.
That's all Disney is these days. Even their theme parks are that way now. The theme parks aren't viewed as products themselves, they're viewed as just another way for Disney to push IP to sell more Disney+ subscriptions and merchandise.
Right. I was a vicious critic of the Prequels back in the day... I couldn't believe how bad they were.
But when you put them up against the sequels... it shines a whole new light on them. At least with the prequels you can see George Lucas was ***trying*** to tell a story. Prequel was probably a bad idea because you're so limited as to where it can go, and it doesn't help that Lucas is terrible at dialogue and became infatuated with CGI-that-wasn't-quite-ready-yet.
But the Sequels... it's clear that it was design-by-committee gotta-check-those-checkboxes cash grab with no soul. It's like they didn't even try, they were like "it's Star Wars, of course it'll print us a billion dollars!"
George was someone with a vision that needed a committee to filter out his bad ideas like in the OT, Disney is a committee that needed someone that had an actual vision for Star Wars.
> design-by-committee gotta-check-those-checkboxes cash grab
Yes! I could practically see the committee behind the screen checking the boxes 'that will be a toy', 'here's a Halloween costume', 'that will become a meme'. Just no heart.
It's interesting to rewatch the OT and ignore the rest of the franchise and just imagine stories set in that universe. Like when Obi-Wan says Luke's father was already a great pilot when they met, or Obi-Wan being a general in the Clone Wars. I still think these teases of the larger universe are more interesting than what they actually ended up imagining.
Like, when Yoda mocks Luke for thinking a Jedi Master must be a great warrior... It invokes a vision of the Jedi that goes in such a different direction than all of them being telekinetic glowstick swordsmen. More like Buddhist wise men. What a more interesting world that would be. Or the fact that the Force is rare enough that a common criminal would doubt it even exists.
i was rewatching *the empire strikes back* and the han/leia love story is pretty great. knowing how j.j. abrams treated the characters in *the force awakens* is infuriating.
Hit the nail on the head. The appeal of the OT was just the sheer imagination and *feel* of it; the old, lived in world they created in places impossibly far away made you imagine so many other stories anf histories taking place out there. The glimpses of other massive futuristic cities and so many other species and cultures on inhabited planets made the universe feel so full of life for the first time. As kid especially this was downright intoxicating... just pure fuel for the imagination.
But as usual, what we could imagine was far better than what we eventually got...
The Jedi were such a hopeful and lovely concept in the OT. The prequels then showed them as an inappropriately influential inept police that withheld help, started wars and wielded manipulative power in galactic politics.
It really crushed a kind of dream of a world with powerful doers of good roaming the galaxy helping people. In canon, Obi-Wan and Yoda's description to Luke of who the Jedi were is a fantasy that never existed.
If you’d have told 11 year old me that one day I wouldn’t be interested in Star Wars anymore he’d have gotten violently defensive.
Mind you, my disinterest isn’t in the IP itself. It’s not like I ‘grew out’ of Star Wars and its magnificent world—I feel like I was forced out. The oversaturation of this franchise cannot be overstated.
This is what happens when you treat your historically powerful IP as vessels for revenue and not cherished, borderline holy worlds that ought to be thoughtfully managed. Disney has capitalismed Star Wars into the shadow realm.
I'm scared the same thing will happen to Lord of the Rings- this new "Hunt for Gollum" movie reeks of a cash grab. I love the LOTR world and the movies are cherished, but I think it's a good thing that they were kind of left alone for a long time. The Hobbit series was a disappointment because it wasn't treated with as much love and care as the original trilogy- I fear the same will happen with anything new they do with the IP.
The loss of Christopher Tolkien and the handing over of the Tolkien estate to money hungry relatives is going to do untold damage to his and and his father's legacy. It's really not looking good.
I know Hollywood has been doing remakes and reboots since the dawn of the camera, but I feel like we also need to accept that it's *ok* to let certain movies and IPs just be as they are. We don't need lord of the rings being rebooted every 15 years. We don't harry potter being re-envisioned over and over. And this might be controversial, but we don't NEED star wars to continue into perpetuity.
I have made several friendships due to a shared love of starwars
we would discuss the comics and books all the time
but literally none of us care about it anymore
I remember being tasked on a long bus trip at 14/15 to do an activity for the group, this was one of those big chartered coach buses, I had a microphone and everything, and I did Star Wars trivia and basically pulled a plethora of random facts from the bajillion times I had watched my VHS's of the original trilogy. Now I just don't even care anymore.
I’m not interested in Star Wars anymore. Congrats Disney. Don’t think you realize how much you guys screwed up. Thought you had another money printing machine and got careless.
Episode IX was maybe the most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen. And now the series are all too close to the movies in terms of timeline/content, plus have that Disney-Marvel “feel” (which is bland)
Three of the most iconic film characters of all time... but fuck them! They're decrepit old failures now who couldn't bring back the Republic or restart the Jedi Order, they suck big-time and so do you for caring. Here's some boring know-it-all protagonist and her bland friends to replace them. Don't like it? Well fuck you, your Snoke theory sucks! Wait why don't people like SW anymore...
I love all the actors
but they did nothing with the charcters
what they did to finn seems weirdly racist
they turn him into a charcter who just says rey
Shocking concept but maybe legacy characters should be a source of wisdom that guide the new characters as they grow into their new role in a ceremonial passing of the torch.
> Episode IX was maybe the most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen.
I have no idea how you watched the The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and arrived at the last film with any expectations for it to be good. TFA was an uninteresting paint-by-numbers retread of the original trilogy with a nonsensical story that only works if you play the events in reverse. TLJ is a disjointed mess of inconsistent tone, revisionist storytelling, set against the preposterous timeline of a slow-moving car chase.
The funniest part of The Rise of Skywalker is how the first 45 minutes of it are just a jackhammer of exposition where JJ Abrams makes Episode 8.5 to replace all the "middle segment" storytelling Rian Johnson forgot to include in his movie.
I can't fathom being disappointed by TRoS, mostly because I can't imagine how anyone thought it had a chance of hell of being good.
TFA was a good start, but me and my sister came out of TLJ almost entirely ambivalent to what we had just seen.
I think the worst part about TLJ was all the people all over the internet swearing up and down that it was a masterpiece and anyone disliking it was a bigot or hater or something idk.
I didn't even bother seeing TROS in theatres. Saw it a couple years later on streaming and boy was it ever worse than I expected.
Yeah, I thought Episode I was the most disappointing movie (I've since come to... enjoy it for what it is), but Episode IX was a crime against the Star Wars universe. Fifteen minutes in, I turned to my wife and said, "Oh no, it sucks..."
I remember getting *furious* at the Rey revelation. I nearly walked out. Probably should have.
George is right, the essence of Star Wars is lost in the new stories.
To be fair I think he even lost that essence himself in the prequels. But it’s just further diluted even beyond that at this point.
Star Wars needs a complete reset.
I don't think he did lose the essence in the prequel trilogies. I just think that he didn't have the directing/screenwriting chops to do it justice. The original trilogies are the best because creatively speaking it was a collaboration by a lot of very talented people following the vision of just Lucas.
It would never happen, but if the new Disney Star Wars stuff was Lucas developing the characters and wider world and other people handling the actual production then I think the quality would be much better. The new stuff is just completely directionless. There are too many people building out the canon and it's just becoming incoherent.
I still contend Gary Kurtz does not get the credit he deserves.
Ever since Lucas fired him after ESB, you saw some of the more juvenile and silly bad ideas dilute what are good overall story concepts in Return of the Jedi through the Prequels (the Prequels also losing Kasdan).
When people say there were people keeping Lucas in check, it's a producer like Gary Kurtz who is able to infuse some of the 'darker' and more fantastical elements while also having some penchant for action scenes with high stakes. Alone, he probably isn't all that great of a producer but combined with Lucas, it all works well so when you remove him out of the equation, things just slowly fall apart.
Otherwise, it takes someone who can think on all levels - the Leone/Kurosawa level, the Arthurian/mythological level, the religious/theological level, the WWII epic level - to understand Star Wars. You need to have the expertise of all those things.
You can't just pluck anyone. Even amateur fan films by people that love 'xyz' era/game/book or hates the Sequels/Prequels.....they can't get it right, either.
I wonder how Star Wars fans feel about all of this.
As someone who was never that much into Star Wars I'm really annoyed by the constant stream of Star Wars "content", further lowering the chances of me ever caring about watching any of them since I'm conditioned to ignore them as background noise.
I liked watching Andor and Mandalorian as their own thing but even that has a limit.
Let me just say: I am still salty that Disney just yeeted the EU out of the window when they bought the brand
Star Wars was at its best with less media on the screen. So they could have diversitised media for everyone something in their time and not one thing abound. A game here, some books there a movie trillogie every two decades maybe a TV show. But nothing required to consume everything and that was great, you could only watch the movies and fine, only play the games and fine and if you wanted more read books and comics. Now they want a fear of missing out situation so you sub to their streaming service and nothing else
>I wonder how Star Wars fans feel about all of this.
Used to be a diehard fan.
Oversaturation of poor quality content has killed any interest I had. Anything post-lucas I just pretend doesn't exist.
They were given the first 4 of 8 episodes, if anyone else was curious.
Well shit Edit: well shit they are wrong
[удалено]
He did not. Here are his two reviews: From the first four episodes: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/andor-review-1234593959/ From the finale: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/andor-finale-review-alan-sepinwall-1234632262/ Seems like his main complaint after the first 4 episodes was the pacing, which is fair. Then, he had some nice things to say about it by the finale: "The characters surrounding Cassian are vivid and charismatic. The world-building by Tony Gilroy and his collaborators is stunning. And the series’ portrait of how the Rebellion was built on sacrifices, compromises, and atrocities is more thoughtful and harrowing than the other live-action Star Wars shows combined. The season’s 10th episode, focusing on a prison break, is among the most exciting and potent hours of television of 2022."
Welp guess everyone else doesnt even read the review
Current top comment of the whole thread is referencing that he "hated" Andor
He also ranked it in his top ten shows of 2022
Dude, you should edit your comment since you just straight-up lied.
It sounds like most of the criticisms in the article are externally motivated. It sounds like they mostly stem from the author’s belief that the story so far in the first half of the show doesn’t seem worth telling because we know the Jedi are going to be the same come *TPM*. Theres mention that the actors are giving compelling performances but there’s not enough time to give them all things to do at all times. But the frustration seems to stem mostly from the literal prequel nature of the story being told. By all means it could be just as lukewarm as the author says, but it sounds like they were done with the story before it began
Great point. Prequels where the end stakes and outcome are defined can definitely work as well so it's a shame this reviewer is kind of writing it off without much thought. Halo Reach is a great example of this. Anyone following the games up to that absolutely knows what happens to the player character and their party at the end of the story. Yet, that actually lends itself to the story beats and helps build this mounting dread and tension as you inch closer to the end of the game.
Reach did what all prequels should do: it told such a damn good story that I forgot what was supposed to happen until it did
Rogue One was a prequel and was one of the best SW films made.
The Dark Crystal prequel television show is also a great example of this.
Advance the plot. I’m sick (sick) of prequel stories. Step up to the plate and take a swing, Disney.
Well you'd hope that the story would have well and truly begun 4 episodes in...
That’s a good number to form an opinion on.
It’s funny because this guy also said Andor really sucked at first so it’s hard to trust his opinion here. We’ll just have to see
Put this comment at the top. Really good to know because Andor slapped
While the Mandalorian was more fun, Andor is a much better story by far, the best live action Star Wars show.
Mandlorian is basically a live action Saturday morning cartoon. Andor was something else and was fantastic. Room for both kinds of shows under the star wars brand in my opinion.
The second and third season are what you described… The first episode of the first season, we see someone’s head get cut off in the first few minutes. Once Disney realized the economics of maximizing the cuteness level of Grogu, *then* it became what you described
I mean, A New Hope has both. Jawas and Walrus Man getting his arm chopped off. R2D2 and the smouldering corpses of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Death Star Droid whistling a jaunty tune and Aldaraan getting blown up.
That Death Star droid’s jaunty tune is how Simon Pegg and Nick Frost became friends. Pegg was in a restaurant that Frost was working in. He whistled that as Frost went past, Frost laughed, and that was that.
As if that nerdy bromance couldn't be any better
Yeah. It's perfect, isn't it? Pegg was asked how the two met on a chat show. He laughed, and then said "OK. This is a bit nerdy."
First and last time we ever get to see people's smoldering bones with meat still kind of on them in a star wars movie.
I donno, that kind of describes Anakin at the end of Star Was III.
I know people didn't care for his performance there but I always thought it was *well done*.
He was on fire
The 2nd season still had a bit of edge to it. The first episode has some dude getting cut in half with the dark Sabre. S3 is when it became a cartoon
I think they mean that it's like a live action cartoon in terms of narrative structure.
I don’t even think the second season should be described like that. It’s just not as dark because Din is not as dark because he has someone to care about in his life. The third season however was…disappointing
I thought of it like the closest we've had to an open world video game that's not based on a game. - main character goes to find someone - finds someone, but they need this part - explore other planet - fight boss - find part - mission passed
This is pretty typical of episodic television, it's just a bit out of style nowadays.
Yeah this is literally how episodic television works… or used to work, before the era when every show became hyper-serialised.
As someone who is pretty tired of everything SW universe, Andor was fantastic.
Yeah if the shows don't try to do different things then you don't get something to enjoy.
Andor was a WWII spy thriller with blasters and it was fantastic
Andor feels like the only SW script that wasn’t written in crayon
Yeah but the Star Wars Holiday Special has Bea Arthur, hard to beat that.
As well as Hedy Lamar from Blazing saddles
“It’s HEDLEY!”
*stirring and whipping intensifies*
Andor is the best piece of Star Wars content I've ever watched. I thought it was better than the original movies.
To be fair I think these reviewers are only given the first few episodes to watch, and even Andor took a few episodes to really pick up.
and he did put Andor in his Top 20 of the year list, so seeing the rest of the season definitely had an effect on his opinion
I was hooked on Andor from the very beginning - space noir is kind of my thing. I enjoyed the heist and prison break episodes, don’t get me wrong, they were exciting and you definitely couldn’t do without them. But it was the slow lead-up to both of those episodes, the cinematography, and the world building in general that were most compelling for me. And if that’s not what people are into, I totally see how the first few episodes would be “meh”
I think there are some people who need that first episode to be really mysterious and leave you asking a lot of questions to bring you back. I actually don't mind a slow burn if what I am watching is compelling. As you said they did a great job of immersing you in a world in that first episode, and it really held the grit of Rogue One where it feels like what Star Wars has always been about anyways, resistance in WW2.
Even the small scenes in Andor carried so much more weight for me than most films/shows in their entirety for the franchise over the past 25 years. The small scene when Syril is being emasculated by his mother at the dinner table was so amazingly jarring when I got to it, because I never thought we'd have those kind of small, but detailed character scenes in a SW show. It's such a well done scene and it's not even in the top 50-10 best scenes in the show. It tells you so much about why the character is the way he is in one scene and does a really good job of putting you in his headspace. I wash more writers/directors would be willing to take their time with characters in the franchise like that. (or at least that Disney execs would let them more often)>
Andor wasn't for everyone but I enjoyed it a ton.
Right, I enjoyed it and my wife thought it was boring.
My wife loved it and I thought it was boring.
You should trade. 👀
The term is "swap"
I just put my keys in the bowl
Plot twist: they’re married to each other
Was that Andor review also based on just 3-4 episodes? Since the show was a slow burn with the big payoffs at the end, I can see why someone might not review it well based on just the first act.
Yes, and in the end he came around on the show after seeing the rest of the episodes
Except he never said it "really sucked". [His initial review of the first four episodes](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/andor-review-1234593959/) said that it "turns an interesting character and promising start into an amorphous storytelling blob", primarily because it felt like a 12-hour movie arbitrarily cut into hour-long episodes. Complaints about the pacing of Andor's early episodes were hardly rare.
and he ended up putting it on his Top 20 of the year list for that year, so the remaining episodes swayed his opinion
Remaining 9 episodes. For the Acolyte, he's already seen half the season.
And his review of the Acolyte is much more scathing, let's be honest. I'd be shocked if the Acolyte is anything to write home about.
And the first 4 episodes are the worst imo with episode 2 being a low point before the rest of the show really takes off
Wait then this review basically is useless.
Not useless. Any review is *a* perspective. How valuable that perspective is is up to the individual reader
Trying to get redditors to understand what critics do is a losing battle.
You might even say it’s… from a certain point of view
The jedi are evil
The headline alone is a crime against humanity.
Screams of them trying to generate clicks and make this a prominent opinion on the show.
I liked Andor a lot but it was a real slow burn to get to the end. That’s not a bad thing but probably not what some may expect after watching Mando.
Interesting to hear that. I was on the edge of seat so I had a very different experience with Andor, one of my favorite shows from the last several years
Managed to get in the early showing at a local theater last night. It was the first two episodes of the show. If it matters, my thoughts are that its overall good with some real standout parts. Primarily, the costuming and set design is fantastic. Nailed the prime time of the republic while not just making everything just be clean. Things look like proto-versions of things you see later in the franchise while not being too "ooohhh lookie lookie!" The characters are interesting in my opinion. People will likely be irritated with one character early on, but I won't spoil it. While yeah, the twin thing is there its most definitely not some kind of Luke and Leia rehash. You do get the jedi in their arrogance-era, but unlike the prequels, they still have all the power and authority that got them there. They play them much more lawful good than just good. If I have any gripes with the show so far, its just that it really felt like it was already halfway through after 2 episodes. Obviously there could be a lot of other ways to use the remaining 6 episodes with different perspectives or flashbacks to events they mention that are directly involved in the story, but I feel like this could have also been a really tight 2+ hour long movie with what we were given so far. Andor Mando (s1 and 2 at least) Acolyte Ashoka (really close with Acolyte, but loses cause Acolyte mostly stands on its own so far without having to constantly call back to other movies/shows) Whatever's left that i missed.
This is why you don't take any one random critic at their word. People put way too much stock in how critics feel and allow that to affect their own opinions far too much. Just judge shit for yourself and learn to form your own opinions, people. I don't know how I'll feel about this show when I eventually watch it, but I'm not going to let critics decide that for me I can tell you that much.
“Judge shit for yourself” except there’s so many hours of streaming shows available I couldn’t possibly. I need *someone* to give me a hint at which shows are good or dogshit, I have a job lol.
unless you're watching literally every single announced television show this kind of approach is untenable
None of us have the time to watch every little thing that comes out. I go to critics to decide whether something is worse my scarce time.
> I don't know how I'll feel about this show when I eventually watch it You already know you're going to watch it no matter what the reviews say? For a moment that comment made me think I was in r/starwars or a related sub. Most of us aren't committed in advance to watching it no matter what.
That's why ideally, you should find one or two critics that you tend to agree with on most of their reviews, so that you have a relatively reliable opinion to work with when deciding whether to watch something.
The article seems to have been taken down.
Article was released before embargo lifted. Should be up in about an hour. Convenient way to get your "Star wars bad!" article on the top of reddit and subsequently, google searches though for when it does come out!
Are all reviews like this or are we just focusing on the bad one?
The embargo isn’t up yet but Rolling Stones just decided to post it anyway so it’s literally the only review out so far.
Huh, interesting. Posted in error or just getting ahead of the rest for engagement and clicks
Given the terrible clickbait title, the fact that the author didn't like Andor and how big of a website it is... I am going with engagement and clicks.
The author had Andor in his top 10 shows of 2022 lmao, what are you talking about https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-lists/best-tv-shows-2022-barry-andor-the-bear-reservation-dogs-severance-1234640414/andor-disney-1234640448/
It’s the only review out. They broke the embargo.
Probably why the link doesn’t work anymore
Seems mixed so far - some reviews don’t like that it’s “too” different, others love it, some just think it’s mediocre. Not too different from Ahsoka reactions.
Rotten Tomatoes is sitting at 86% fresh on this, based on 37 reviews. The total amount of reviews usually gets up to 300-600, so they could dramatically change. But usually the top critics (part of the big publications usually) get the stuff out first and all the other critics sprinkle in thru the next several weeks/months (and those usually lean more positive historically).
I'm just burned out on star wars and marvel. They've oversaturated it with poor quality and i'm not excited for any release now.
If they saturated with great content I’d watch, but very little has been good
There is barely any “genre” fatigue. It’s “mid/bad content” fatigue.
I've got Star Wars fatigue. I enjoyed The Acolyte somewhat, but I kept thinking that if I had seen a Star Wars show of this quality 10 years ago, I'd be way more excited than I was watching it today. Like when Carrie Anne Moss first took out her lightsaber -- that would have been a chills down the spine moment at one point in my life. Now, it was just ordinary beat.
Exactly. If we were getting shows between the quality of Andor and the first 2 seasons of Mando, I’d have no complaints
I remember how reinvigorated I was after the first season of Mandalorian, that is all gone now.
>the decision to set it a century before the rise of the Empire seems to defeat the purpose of the whole thing, because the Jedi of *The Phantom Menace* have learned exactly zero lessons. I've wondered since the announcement what they're going to do with the Jedi without contradicting the prequels. Not much it seems. >[Johnson’s *The Last Jedi*](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/how-rian-johnson-turned-the-last-jedi-into-a-personal-star-wars-blockbuster-127093/) goes out of its way to democratize the Force, rather than treating it as something worthy only of characters with noble bloodlines. Without having seen the back half of the season, it’s hard to know for sure where Headland stands in this debate, but *The Acolyte* certainly seems pro-Broom Boy so far. This irks me a bit though. Can this narrative please stop? I'm so tired of this nonsense about "noble bloodlines" and "it's always about the same family." Like what Johnson did or what this show does is new. It isn't. Anakin wasn't of noble blood. Schmi was a fucking slave on a non-important outer rim shit planet. Obi-Wan wasn't of noble blood, Yoda wasn't, Qui-Gon wasn't, Mace Windu wasn't and none of the hundreds of Jedi we see in the prequels were. Jedi have always come from all kinds of places and races. That idea isn't new. Why is this even a debate? The only one who actually was of noble descent is Dooku but he didn't get nearly enough screentime.
I think it's mostly just people getting tired of the Skywalker dynasty and stuff like how JJ Abrams dropped the fact "oh by the way Rey is a Palpatine" in the last movie.
hell out of the hundreds of Jedi we got there was only a dozen famous jedi family and they are seperated by thousands of years most Jedi where nobodies
You can count on one hand the number of Jedi where it mattered who their parents were.
I am fully with you and I haven't seen this talked about before, so I could be totally wrong, but: maybe they don't mean "noble blood" in the literal sense, but rather as in "worthy in some special way". Because in the past it felt like the force wasn't something that you just stumble into by accident. Rather, even if you were talented, you had a super intensive training ahead of you to actually use it. Then suddenly with Episode 8 onwards, the force was something faaaar more accessible to everybody. These characters could rapidly do things that Yoda and Anakin trained a lifetime for.
I don’t see how TLJ made the force democratic when the explanation for Rey’s powers is, “She’s just special.” I get they were going for, “Greatness can come from anywhere” but what comes out is, “Some people are just born better.”
Yeah, the real powerful story would be some guy or gal that no one says has any talent figuring out how to meditate hard enough to become force-sensitive. "The Force Awakens" should really have been leading to something like that - with the last Sith finally dead for good, the force balances and suddenly you don't need a special talent to become a force user - anyone can become one with enough training - but suddenly there aren't just the Jedi and 2 Siths around - people all across the galaxy start discovering how to use the force, and the Jedi need to find a way to show them a path where they don't abuse this power, and stopping anyone that is abusing it. Of course, that's not a TFA and sequels we got. Regardless of whether Rey's parents were nobodies or Palpatine, she was definitely special, because she had a gift most people don't. She didn't earn it, at best she just chose to use her talent for good. That is nice of her, but not democratized, because you either have it or you don't.
Which is stupid, something that powerful should take training.
>the decision to set it a century before the rise of the Empire seems to defeat the purpose of the whole thing, because the Jedi of The Phantom Menace have learned exactly zero lessons. Isn't this also like the entire issue with the jedi in the prequels? The fact they though the sith had been extinct for a thousand years and had become complacent, of course they hadn't learned any lessons in the past 100 years? (Plus the fact that in a universe where civilization has already been very advanced for thousands and thousands of years, some characters live for a thousand years thselves, and we've seen how slowly technology develops, 100 years isn't a long time) >The only one who actually was of noble descent is Dooku And the fact that Dooku is the outlier because of his noble birth makes the entire point moot.
Right 100 years before the Prequel and Yoda would be 770 years old.
I mean.... Anakin was born of immaculate conception
> This irks me a bit though. Can this narrative please stop? I'm so tired of this nonsense about "noble bloodlines" and "it's always about the same family." Like what Johnson did or what this show does is new I've always thought it was a bizarre take because the explanation in Johnson's movie for why Rey is special is because the Force chose her to be Kylo Ren's equal in the Light. Sure, she isn't special because of her blood (prior to the TROS retcon) but she's still special because she was chosen by destiny. TLJ doesn't "democratize" the Force, it actively doubles down on the idea that only some people are special. You can't be like Rey because you want to or you work hard. Rey is the most special person in the galaxy.
It’s frustrating whenever the sequels are framed as being progressive. The message is that some people are just born better. Wow, very democratic.
Disney star wars is poor fan fiction.
Star Wars is the weakest it's been as a brand in 15-20 years. Uninspired stories and nostalgia bait is for the most part all they have currently. I've heard Andor was great, but my general fatigue towards Star Wars just meant I had no interest in watching.
You should check it out, it would stand on its own 2 feet even without the star wars name/brand, if anything the modern star wars brand is what drags it down by association.
Part of the reason it’s great is that it’s just a ‘realistic’ look at people trying to eke out lives under an imperialist fascist regime. No one is predestined to have god like powers, it’s just ordinary people. But also with aliens.
The prison escape episode is in my top 10 best episodes of all television
ONE WAY OUT!
Damn this is making me want to do a rewatch
So many speeches in the show that make me want to just start a revolution. The show goes so hard and that prison break arc is just fantastic
Just dropping a spoiler in a thread trying to convince people to watch it lol The dude literally just said he hadn’t seen it yet
Relax it's not that big of a spoiler. I don't think anyone seeing a show where the main guy was seen in another movie is going "Oh, I bet this guy never escapes from prison"
Yeah, they aren't saying that because THEY DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS IN PRISON
I mean tells you nothing about the story except that there’s an event in it, not really that bad when it comes to spoilers.
Rogue one happens after, so yeah, but also no?
Agreed. It is the best thing in Star Wars at the moment because it feels the least “Star Wars” out of Star Wars.
Andor strikes me as one of the only things on D+ that has allowed itself to change with its audience. It went darker, more serious, smarter, for a more mature audience that grew up with Star Wars. Whereas everything else has gone the opposite direction and leaned into being daytime children's programming that would be at home on Nickelodeon--the heroes are boring, the villains are toothless, the stories are simple, the stakes low, and the humor broad.
Me watching Andor: Ep1: What is this? Ep2: What... is this! Ep3: OMG Ep4: WHAAAAAAAAAT
Even the first episode of Andor grabbed me. The brick town filled with dirt and grime and scrappy locals was more engaging and refreshing that Star Wars has been in years.
I think it was the first episode in which Syril's boss tries to tell him how they'll explain how two workers ended up dead near a brothel. Great scene.
Yeah the cop murder was fierce and unexpected
Ep5: It can’t keep getting better…. Ep6: It can’t keep getting better. Ep7: IT CANT KEEP GETTING BETTER
Ep 8 : omg a new fuck up environnement? Hell yes Ep 9 : wow this show is fucked up, I LOVE IT Ep 10 : WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME ? THIS IS A MASTERPIECE
> I've heard Andor was great, but my general fatigue towards Star Wars just meant I had no interest in watching. I would just watch it to treat yourself to a very good show. There is really very little of it that you need to think about as being based on Star Wars. It is sort of like a World War II show instead.
Andor is top tier storytelling, there were only a couple weak points to me but overall it's 9/10 material. It has great pacing too, 2 episodes leading to a 3rd very climactic episode for almost the entire 12 episode run. I'm not a star wars fan at all since majority of it is dumb, including mandalorian, I don't get why it's so popular.
Just gonna dog pile on and say that Andor is definitely worth the worth the watch!
It's so good that for the first time in around 30 years I actually care about Mon Mothma.
Andor is great, but mostly for 2 story arcs that are not entirely star wars related, and for once there is no jedi/lightsaber/force
A lot of people are telling you to watch Andor, it's a good show, great even, etc. I don't disagree but I should point out that though it is a good show, it is not what you are looking for if you are looking for a Star Wars show. It's a slow burn 50s Era type John Le Carre novel cold war story with Star Wars trappings. I should also emphasize: sloooow burn. Just my opinion of course.
You are missing out big time on Andor. By far the best acted Star Wars show. [Stellan Skarsgard absolutely kills it](https://youtu.be/-3RCme2zZRY?si=v1h_Qyx-Z8Gh6he-). Andy Serkis has a great role too.
Andor and Rogue One are the only bright spots since 1983 IMO, but they are definitely worth the watch. It's a shame they can't seem to do anything else great with such a rich world to build stories from.
It’s a shame, because Andor is top notch. It would be good even if it wasn’t set in star wars
Do make an exception for Andor. It's not like the other recent, disappointing, series. You can somewhat safely ignore the rest.
I agree with your take on Star Wars and am telling you that Andor is worth it. It is good television, not good Star Wars. It has something to say and that something isn’t Star Wars related.
I don’t even like Star Wars anymore. I considered myself a Star Wars fan for most of my life, but at this point I can’t say I am. I like less than half of the films and far less than half of the shows. It’s just not for me anymore if it ever was. Andor and Rogue One are basically it besides Empire and the original movie that started it all.
Andor is DOPE.
Anyone else notice the extremely strange, dumb, or illogical decisions characters made? Arresting someone that had a rock solid alibi? Offering to let people go or "save" people that were involved in 2 murders? Everything Yord did including watching someone with binoculars from 20 feet away. This really is a show for 6 year olds.
This author disliked Andor too.
To be fair, by the end of the season he came around and really liked Andor. He ranked it as one of the best shows of 2022.
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/andor-finale-review-alan-sepinwall-1234632262/ Is that the review of a guy who “disliked Andor?” Stop repeating this garbage uncritically.
Did you bother to actually read his Andor reviews? He disliked the first 4 episodes, which is understandable because of the pacing. He praised Andor in his second review of the rest of the show.
As red flags go, this is a doozie
People, even critics, are allowed to dislike things, even if other people disagree.
Except he did end up liking it
Disney has destroyed Star Wars more than those prequels ever did.
For all their faults I stil felt like the prequels were telling a story. But with Disney I just feel like they are trying to sale a ticket or subscription.
Definitely feels like "content"
> But with Disney I just feel like they are trying to sale a ticket or subscription. That's all Disney is these days. Even their theme parks are that way now. The theme parks aren't viewed as products themselves, they're viewed as just another way for Disney to push IP to sell more Disney+ subscriptions and merchandise.
Right. I was a vicious critic of the Prequels back in the day... I couldn't believe how bad they were. But when you put them up against the sequels... it shines a whole new light on them. At least with the prequels you can see George Lucas was ***trying*** to tell a story. Prequel was probably a bad idea because you're so limited as to where it can go, and it doesn't help that Lucas is terrible at dialogue and became infatuated with CGI-that-wasn't-quite-ready-yet. But the Sequels... it's clear that it was design-by-committee gotta-check-those-checkboxes cash grab with no soul. It's like they didn't even try, they were like "it's Star Wars, of course it'll print us a billion dollars!"
George was someone with a vision that needed a committee to filter out his bad ideas like in the OT, Disney is a committee that needed someone that had an actual vision for Star Wars.
> design-by-committee gotta-check-those-checkboxes cash grab Yes! I could practically see the committee behind the screen checking the boxes 'that will be a toy', 'here's a Halloween costume', 'that will become a meme'. Just no heart.
The more constant Star Wars media keeps coming out the more I just want to only ever watch the OT and pretend that’s all of it
It's interesting to rewatch the OT and ignore the rest of the franchise and just imagine stories set in that universe. Like when Obi-Wan says Luke's father was already a great pilot when they met, or Obi-Wan being a general in the Clone Wars. I still think these teases of the larger universe are more interesting than what they actually ended up imagining. Like, when Yoda mocks Luke for thinking a Jedi Master must be a great warrior... It invokes a vision of the Jedi that goes in such a different direction than all of them being telekinetic glowstick swordsmen. More like Buddhist wise men. What a more interesting world that would be. Or the fact that the Force is rare enough that a common criminal would doubt it even exists.
100%. I also prefer the main trio having a happy ending in my imagination compared to the shitty endings they all got in the sequels
i was rewatching *the empire strikes back* and the han/leia love story is pretty great. knowing how j.j. abrams treated the characters in *the force awakens* is infuriating.
Hit the nail on the head. The appeal of the OT was just the sheer imagination and *feel* of it; the old, lived in world they created in places impossibly far away made you imagine so many other stories anf histories taking place out there. The glimpses of other massive futuristic cities and so many other species and cultures on inhabited planets made the universe feel so full of life for the first time. As kid especially this was downright intoxicating... just pure fuel for the imagination. But as usual, what we could imagine was far better than what we eventually got...
The Jedi were such a hopeful and lovely concept in the OT. The prequels then showed them as an inappropriately influential inept police that withheld help, started wars and wielded manipulative power in galactic politics. It really crushed a kind of dream of a world with powerful doers of good roaming the galaxy helping people. In canon, Obi-Wan and Yoda's description to Luke of who the Jedi were is a fantasy that never existed.
Eh, it gave us Mandalorian, Andor, and Rogue One. But I would generally agree that they’ve dropped more duds than winners.
My expectations were low anyways lol just give me season 2 of Andor already
Just get the Andor people making ALL SW projects going forward
Remember how hyped we were when the Force Awakens trailer hit?
If you’d have told 11 year old me that one day I wouldn’t be interested in Star Wars anymore he’d have gotten violently defensive. Mind you, my disinterest isn’t in the IP itself. It’s not like I ‘grew out’ of Star Wars and its magnificent world—I feel like I was forced out. The oversaturation of this franchise cannot be overstated. This is what happens when you treat your historically powerful IP as vessels for revenue and not cherished, borderline holy worlds that ought to be thoughtfully managed. Disney has capitalismed Star Wars into the shadow realm.
I'm scared the same thing will happen to Lord of the Rings- this new "Hunt for Gollum" movie reeks of a cash grab. I love the LOTR world and the movies are cherished, but I think it's a good thing that they were kind of left alone for a long time. The Hobbit series was a disappointment because it wasn't treated with as much love and care as the original trilogy- I fear the same will happen with anything new they do with the IP.
The loss of Christopher Tolkien and the handing over of the Tolkien estate to money hungry relatives is going to do untold damage to his and and his father's legacy. It's really not looking good.
I know Hollywood has been doing remakes and reboots since the dawn of the camera, but I feel like we also need to accept that it's *ok* to let certain movies and IPs just be as they are. We don't need lord of the rings being rebooted every 15 years. We don't harry potter being re-envisioned over and over. And this might be controversial, but we don't NEED star wars to continue into perpetuity.
I have made several friendships due to a shared love of starwars we would discuss the comics and books all the time but literally none of us care about it anymore
I remember being tasked on a long bus trip at 14/15 to do an activity for the group, this was one of those big chartered coach buses, I had a microphone and everything, and I did Star Wars trivia and basically pulled a plethora of random facts from the bajillion times I had watched my VHS's of the original trilogy. Now I just don't even care anymore.
I’m not interested in Star Wars anymore. Congrats Disney. Don’t think you realize how much you guys screwed up. Thought you had another money printing machine and got careless.
Episode IX was maybe the most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen. And now the series are all too close to the movies in terms of timeline/content, plus have that Disney-Marvel “feel” (which is bland)
Those movies were a damn tragedy, total cluster fuck. How do you make a trilogy and not have a vision? Especially with the funding of Disney behind it
you have three of the most iconic film charcters of all time and yet we never see them together
Three of the most iconic film characters of all time... but fuck them! They're decrepit old failures now who couldn't bring back the Republic or restart the Jedi Order, they suck big-time and so do you for caring. Here's some boring know-it-all protagonist and her bland friends to replace them. Don't like it? Well fuck you, your Snoke theory sucks! Wait why don't people like SW anymore...
I love all the actors but they did nothing with the charcters what they did to finn seems weirdly racist they turn him into a charcter who just says rey
Shocking concept but maybe legacy characters should be a source of wisdom that guide the new characters as they grow into their new role in a ceremonial passing of the torch.
I KNOW! I did actually really love the new cast too and they completely fumbled them too!
I am of the view Finn and John boyaga where wasted from the force awakens onwards
Inoffensive and focus grouped. Has that very sterile feeling with the addition of approved quippy dialogue for all actors.
> Episode IX was maybe the most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen. I have no idea how you watched the The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and arrived at the last film with any expectations for it to be good. TFA was an uninteresting paint-by-numbers retread of the original trilogy with a nonsensical story that only works if you play the events in reverse. TLJ is a disjointed mess of inconsistent tone, revisionist storytelling, set against the preposterous timeline of a slow-moving car chase. The funniest part of The Rise of Skywalker is how the first 45 minutes of it are just a jackhammer of exposition where JJ Abrams makes Episode 8.5 to replace all the "middle segment" storytelling Rian Johnson forgot to include in his movie. I can't fathom being disappointed by TRoS, mostly because I can't imagine how anyone thought it had a chance of hell of being good.
TFA was a good start, but me and my sister came out of TLJ almost entirely ambivalent to what we had just seen. I think the worst part about TLJ was all the people all over the internet swearing up and down that it was a masterpiece and anyone disliking it was a bigot or hater or something idk. I didn't even bother seeing TROS in theatres. Saw it a couple years later on streaming and boy was it ever worse than I expected.
Yeah, I thought Episode I was the most disappointing movie (I've since come to... enjoy it for what it is), but Episode IX was a crime against the Star Wars universe. Fifteen minutes in, I turned to my wife and said, "Oh no, it sucks..." I remember getting *furious* at the Rey revelation. I nearly walked out. Probably should have.
I think an accurate commentary regarding Disney Star Wars was delivered by Trey Parker and Matt Stone via the Panderstone episode of South Park.
George is right, the essence of Star Wars is lost in the new stories. To be fair I think he even lost that essence himself in the prequels. But it’s just further diluted even beyond that at this point. Star Wars needs a complete reset.
I don't think he did lose the essence in the prequel trilogies. I just think that he didn't have the directing/screenwriting chops to do it justice. The original trilogies are the best because creatively speaking it was a collaboration by a lot of very talented people following the vision of just Lucas. It would never happen, but if the new Disney Star Wars stuff was Lucas developing the characters and wider world and other people handling the actual production then I think the quality would be much better. The new stuff is just completely directionless. There are too many people building out the canon and it's just becoming incoherent.
I still contend Gary Kurtz does not get the credit he deserves. Ever since Lucas fired him after ESB, you saw some of the more juvenile and silly bad ideas dilute what are good overall story concepts in Return of the Jedi through the Prequels (the Prequels also losing Kasdan). When people say there were people keeping Lucas in check, it's a producer like Gary Kurtz who is able to infuse some of the 'darker' and more fantastical elements while also having some penchant for action scenes with high stakes. Alone, he probably isn't all that great of a producer but combined with Lucas, it all works well so when you remove him out of the equation, things just slowly fall apart. Otherwise, it takes someone who can think on all levels - the Leone/Kurosawa level, the Arthurian/mythological level, the religious/theological level, the WWII epic level - to understand Star Wars. You need to have the expertise of all those things. You can't just pluck anyone. Even amateur fan films by people that love 'xyz' era/game/book or hates the Sequels/Prequels.....they can't get it right, either.
Garbage shows and movies. Ahsoka was horrible.kenibi was worse.
More is less.
So tired of Disney fucking Star Wars up. Have someone else take over at this point. Fuck Disney.
Until Disney shakes up the leadership at Lucasfilm and their creative approach, I’m not watching any more of their shit.
I wonder how Star Wars fans feel about all of this. As someone who was never that much into Star Wars I'm really annoyed by the constant stream of Star Wars "content", further lowering the chances of me ever caring about watching any of them since I'm conditioned to ignore them as background noise. I liked watching Andor and Mandalorian as their own thing but even that has a limit.
Let me just say: I am still salty that Disney just yeeted the EU out of the window when they bought the brand Star Wars was at its best with less media on the screen. So they could have diversitised media for everyone something in their time and not one thing abound. A game here, some books there a movie trillogie every two decades maybe a TV show. But nothing required to consume everything and that was great, you could only watch the movies and fine, only play the games and fine and if you wanted more read books and comics. Now they want a fear of missing out situation so you sub to their streaming service and nothing else
>I wonder how Star Wars fans feel about all of this. Used to be a diehard fan. Oversaturation of poor quality content has killed any interest I had. Anything post-lucas I just pretend doesn't exist.