Andor: Season 1 [2022]
“I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them.”
To start with what might be an unpopular opinion, Star Wars has almost always been something best remembered, rather than experienced. Like an abstract piece of art, your perception of the piece – your intuited meaning behind its lines and curves and strokes and colors – Star Wars has always been better to discuss or emulate than to engage with in any narrative sense and, as an adult, the galaxy far, far away is served with such a hearty helping of nostalgia — a taste that turns even the most mild experience into a delicacy — that it’s often difficult to see how genuinely silly it really is. This isn’t to say it’s not an an experience I’ve visited again, and again, but more that, when the rose tinted glasses are removed, it never quite emulsifies into the behemoth that I remember it being. The music, the sights, the sounds, the words are all there… But it’s always in my memory where they hold the most meaning; Not in the moments on screen. Star Wars, to conclude this unpopular opinion, has almost never actually been very good.
What Star Wars has always been, however, is mystical and grand and fun. Its images and concepts have inspired worldwide imaginations, its characters in their simplistic archetypes are as memetic as they are motivating and, while its neatly boxed motivations and kitschy plots have always been better for a laugh or high school English classes than anything else, there’s an undeniable magic about the universe the franchise created.
While most things from childhood are that way, Star Wars, in all its iterations, seems to serve as a particularly ubiquitous set of experiences. You remember them fondly — their impact on your worldview, the games you played with your friends, the characters you wanted to be, and the things you wished you could take straight out of the screen. Less ubiquitous, but just as profound for me, Star Wars has been that something better remembered for a very long time. Through so many releases it’s been that aforementioned piece of artwork – the one that makes you feel a way you just can’t explain. The one that you share with others to revel in the magic it brings them, while you desperately try to experience it yourself again and again despite never quite being able to recapture it. For so long now, the galaxy far, far away, has seemed like a happy accident all along.
Tony Gilroy’s 2022, Andor, has changed that.
With characters that serve as actual people instead of the typical stilted stereotypes, choices that show the true cost of running a rebellion against an impossibly large enemy, emotive and adept filmmaking, and the masterful execution of a time, a place, and a journey for which we already know the conclusion: Andor is truly the Star Wars I’ve wanted for far, far too long.
While the show is not entirely without its weaker moments, Andor – by and large – is an incredible ride that paints many of our favorite roles, groups, and factions in colors that make us question our allegiance to their methods, if not their cause entirely. There are always casualties in a conflict, and which side of history you’re standing on is always a matter of perception. This grayness is something Andor executes with a deftness never before seen in the franchise, and one rarely executed in film more generally. I can only hope that Disney takes some notes from this production and carries the overwhelming quality of this entire outing into future projects.
I know this wasn’t a typical review in that it took half of it to get to the point, but that’s because Andor is not your typical experience – it’s a revival. Andor reinforced and reinvigorated a love I thought was doomed and lost to shiny, consumptive “filmmaking”, bad special effects, loose and forgettable plots, and rehashes upon rehashes of ideas we’ve seen before. So, in a lot of ways, this isn’t a review at all.
It’s a thank you.
It’s a relieved breath as something I thought was gone entirely has wandered out of the rain, stronger and better than ever…
It’s a love letter.
I have loved Star Wars longer than I can remember, and I have loved the memory of Star Wars even more fondly. In the same way this is a love letter to the show, I see the show as a love letter to the soul of the franchise at large. I finally have [and I believe that I can say we finally have] Star Wars content to be truly proud of, and something to unabashedly fall in love with all over again.
Andor is the Star Wars we thought we had as kids, wanted desperately as adolescents, thought was lost as adults, and now… Actually exists.
I love Star Wars, and I'm so glad someone else has finally proven that they do as well.
