I'm finding it extremely grating how hard Andor is being circlejerked as a "serious show for intellectuals", especially when years ago sequel trilogy criticism was shouted down with the "Star Wars is a silly franchise about space wizards fighting for retarded children so just turn your brain off bro" line. Like, which one is it?
Maybe if the franchise hadn't been totally destroyed by now I would care. And the funny thing is it's going to go right back to being lowest common denominator memberberry slop anyway with the upcoming Filoni horseshit.
I still don't get what's great about Andor. Its just meh. It has good moments but nothing truly great
You're dealing with a lot of people who have never read an SWEU novel or played a SW game in their lives.
Andor's Ghorman Massacre is well-done, but it's just a normal day for the Empire. Acting like this is somehow the worst thing the Empire did kind of forgets the fact that they enslaved the Wookiees, exterminated the Geonosians, bombed Mandalore into radioactive waffles, compared to that shit, Ghorman was just business as usual. That officer who triggered it stood calmly behind that glass door because to him, he's seen this before, he's done this before, and this would likely not be the last time. Hell, one could say that Ghorman was an exercise in Darwinism, since the old man rightfully pointed out that the Empire allowing protests in the plaza was obviously a trap, so everyone who walked in there should've known that there's a chance they weren't coming back.
If they thought that having 4 hours of Ghorman before the massacre makes it relate to you, makes it genuine, then try living for 8 hours on Taris in KOTOR before Malak decides to bomb it back to the stone age. All those people you meet and get to know, from the friendly janitor, to the doctor hiding dying Republic troops, to the droid merchant trying to deal with anti-alien prejudice, or even the Mandalorian gladiator in the cantina hanging around like a poser, they all fucking die because Malak was too fucking lazy to search for Bastila himself. (Dude could've turned on the Swoop Bike channel and found his target.)
It just seems to me that a lot of these critics inherently see books and video games as lesser than TV when it comes to media criticisms, and while the Ghorman Massacre is good TV for 2025 standards, it's hardly the worst thing the Sith or the Empire have done. Fucking Crix Madine gassed the entire planet of Dentaal on Imperial orders just to put down a riot, and the dude couldn't live with himself afterwards and defected to the Alliance.
If it were me, the Ghorman Massacre would've been something I'd open with, and an even greater atrocity would be what I'd have made the season climax.
I think one of the biggest draws is the character work. Lots of other SW stuff is just plot with no characterization like the Ahsoka or Kenobi shows. Meanwhile Gilroy is pretty good at dialog and characterization where a scene usually serves multiple purposes or there's two discussions going on at once, so Andor feels refreshing where even if the subject matter were silly, the characterization isn't retarded.
The old SWEU had a good way of building up characters, from Thrawn to Meetra Surik. Gilroy is basically drawing upon stuff from the old SWEU (Tarkin's Ghorman Massacre, the Rakatans) as a guide-map for how he wrote his characters, and he isn't the first SW author to dislike lightsabers and the Force. (*cough* Karen Traviss *cough*)
