- When I was a kid, I don't
think there was anything I was more obsessed with than Star Wars. Star Wars birthday cake,
Star Wars birthday costume, Star Wars Darth Mal Taco Bell cup. Practically all I ever
did was watch these movies while playing with the toys
that were based on these movies. The great thing about
the original three movies is that they still hold up today. They're exciting to watch, they're full of great performances, they've got an iconic soundtrack, there's hardly any incest in them. And it's crazy to think
how much of what was made at this point more than 40 years ago is still acting as the sun around which every new piece
of Star Wars media revolves. The like four characters
created for these movies that get shoehorned into every new series, every re-imagining, because Star Wars even as one of the largest
brands in the world, cannot seem to exist without them. They cannot create anything
without a Skywalker or an Obi-Wan or a Yoda or a Darth Vader, and they're barely even trying to. It honestly seems like their
entire goal at this point is to just be like, "Remember this guy?" "Remember this guy?" And if this is all they're
gonna do with the brand, what is even the point? If every new show is only going to exist as a way to remind us of
something we've already seen, how much more Star Wars do we need? Now, I'm certainly not about to sit here and act like I'm somehow
immune to nostalgia bait because that would be a lie. When Disney released the first trailer for the "Obi-Wan Kenobi"
show, I was ecstatic. Ewan Macgregor was always
one of my favorite things about the prequel trilogy, and I could not wait to see him come back and play this character again. But then the weirdest thing happened, the show came out and it
ended up being so boring, I stopped watching after two episodes and didn't think about it
again for an entire year. Turns out bringing back
a recognizable character is a pretty good way to get people to pay
attention to something. But you still have to put
in a little bit of effort. For one, I was shocked at
how cheap everything looked. I know they didn't quite
have a movie budget for this, but it's not like they
were working with nothing. But it's so bland and gray and dark. A lot of the action sequences
are nauseating to watch because of the artificial
camera shake they threw in. What is this even supposed to convey, that the cameraman is scared? It just looks stupid. And of course the production
problems could be overlooked if there was a story worth telling here, but I think they forgot
to come up with one. None of the characters are interesting, including the one that
should have been a slam dunk. You somehow took a character that's existed in people's
heads for over 40 years and wrote him to be so flat that I can't remember
a single thing he said or did in the show. There's no fear instilled
by the antagonist because they're completely incompetent. The writing is inconsistent and the rules change from scene to scene. "Four stormtroopers, huh? Piece of cake for a guy like me. Oh, fuck, three stormtroopers? I give up, don't shoot! Damn, if only they brought a fourth guy." This also happens just a few seconds after he tries way too hard to open a gate they very clearly could
have just walked around. Did that fight give him a concussion? In episode four, Obi-Wan
has to go save Leia from her imprisonment on what is described as an extremely secure base. - It's impenetrable. - It's suicide. - You're not getting in there. - Yeah, it looks pretty secure to me. They've got an entire
droid patrolling the place. Not to mention multiple
doors that are unlocked. - It's impenetrable. - Okay, well he made it into the base, but there's no way they're
getting outta there. Look how conspicuous they're being. Surely someone will notice the human child hiding under his jacket. No one sees that? Are their helmets on backwards? Oh, there we go, now they're screwed. They are completely
surrounded by stormtroopers. There's no way they're
getting out of this. They got away. Everything worked out. And it's not because they came
up with like a strategic plan or anything, they just
lowered the difficulty to easy and ran straight to the ship. This show feels like it
was reverse engineered. They knew people like this character, so they decided to make a series about him and then it's like, "We'll figure out a plot for it later on." "Sir, the show came out last summer." "And we're so close to
figuring out a plot for it." They knew people liked Baby
Yoda in "The Mandalorian" so they put the baby version
of a different legacy character in this show because why
try to make something new when you've already stumbled
upon a formula that works? What is this, my YouTube channel? Really this entire series doesn't do a single interesting thing until this moment near the end. And yeah, this fight was
pretty cool, I enjoyed it. I don't think the rest of
the show needed to exist. This is like eight minutes
that are worth watching out of the entire six episode series. They could have just filmed this part and thrown it up on Vimeo or something. You didn't even need to bother
with all that other shit. Like what is the point of introducing Reva or any of these inquisitors if you're not gonna do anything with them. They just act as placeholder villains until Darth Vader shows up. They don't have an arc, they're not written or
portrayed in a memorable way, they're just there. Like Reva's whole thing is she's trying to earn the trust of Vader so he'll let his guard down
around her and she can strike when he least expects it. Now, obviously we know
that isn't going to work because Darth Vader is very much alive in the movies we've already seen, but we don't know how close she gets. Maybe she comes up with a perfect plan and everything works out until something goes
wrong at the last moment, or she has some inner conflict and hesitates and misses her chance. Like there's so many possibilities for how this could have played out. You wanna know what the final
draft version of her plan was? (dramatic music) Run up behind him and yell. Even if he didn't have telekinetic powers, he still has ears. How did you think this was gonna go? Why did we watch five
episodes of this character if this is all it was leading to? What a waste of time. Writing characters that
are mind-numbingly stupid is an unfortunate staple across the Disney+ Star Wars universe. It continues to pop up in the show that I watched after this one and the one that came out
most recently, "Ahsoka." Now, this show is definitely
better than "Kenobi" but not by much. Our first introduction
to the titular character is this unbelievably long scene where she's just slowly
touching stuff in this cave and things start moving
around and making noise, and it's so mysterious and it
goes on for like four minutes. Also, she can find the golden ball, and then she takes the ball, and then she tells people about the ball, and then her apprentice
tinkers with the ball, and then someone steals the ball, and that's pretty much
all of what episode one is until the end. Oh, my god, she fucking died? All right, I'll admit it,
that is a bold opening. You've established stakes, you've shown how ruthless
the enemy can be, how they'll stop at nothing
to get what they want. This already adds a bunch of
depth to a Ahsoka's character. And what's that? She's fine?
- I'm fine. - I guess it was just a minor stabbing. Sorry, it's just like I feel like people usually have died from that. Relax Obi-Wan, he's fine. Just throw a bandaid on it
and drag him back to the ship. Okay, and it's not just that
she inexplicably survived something that has killed
every other character every time it's happened, it's that she's almost
entirely unaffected by this. She spends like 10 minutes in the hospital and then continues about her day. If you take out the part
where she got stabbed for pilot episode cliffhanger purposes, then the plot would be exactly the same. Worse though, it makes
every battle going forward seem a little less important because apparently
lightsabers don't kill people. So why would I be nervous
watching any of these fights? Nothing a little Neosporin can't fix. It's not just the first episode though, this is a theme throughout
the entire show. How many times are the main characters going to end up in battles where they get shot at a
million times and never get hit? It happens here and here
and here and here and here and here and here. I know that nothing bad
is going to happen to them because nothing ever
does, they are invincible. And once you realize that, these scenes are no longer
exciting, they're just loud. There are no stakes because
the enemy is useless. Now, the one thing to
come outta that episode is that Sabine the apprentice
who died, but didn't die, gave the golden ball map to the bad guys and that map has the coordinates
to an even bigger bad guy. So the good guys need to get
that map back from the bad guys before they use it to
find the other bad guy. But they also need the map
because guess who else is there? Another good guy. Now, I like that this premise sets up an interesting moral dilemma because they know that even
though they want to use the map to find their friend Ezra, they know that if they go to the planet that both he and Thrawn,
the main villain are at, that they risk giving Thrawn a way out, something he currently doesn't have. So there's a case to be made that if they were to just destroy the map, they would be sacrificing
their friend Ezra for the greater good because
everything we hear about Thrawn is that he's like hell-bent on destroying the entire universe. So as hard as it would be to do, it kind of seems like maybe
giving up on your friend would be the best thing that
would save the most lives. But of course they don't do that. Sabine is like... - [Both] Yeah, people are gonna die. - But Ezra's my buddy, and it's
not just that she does this, it's the total lack of
reaction from anyone else. Sabine's selfish actions will
lead to yet another Star War and no one's even a little bit upset. Wouldn't it have been interesting if when Ezra first sees
Sabine, he kind of freaks out. Like, "No, no, no, no, you can't be here. You've doomed the entire
galaxy just to save me? I'm not worth that. What were you thinking?" Right? Instead he's just like,
"Yo, where my hug at?" Remember that scene in "The Dark Knight" where they only have time
to save either Harvey or his girlfriend Rachel, and they make the difficult
choice to save him because of what he represents to the city, but instead of being relieved when he sees that someone is there to save him, his immediate reaction
is anguish at the thought of someone else dying for his sake? I don't know, just thinking
about that for no reason at all. I feel like everything that
could have been interesting about this show is not. Like I was so intrigued when
these two came on screen and seeing how they interacted
with the main characters. This could have been such
an interesting parallel of master and apprentice. We could have seen the similarities
between these two pairs. But that's not explored at all outside of just how the
fight scenes get split up. You watch the entire season and you still don't know
anything about these people. I guess he's on some mission to find power and then they have to
like split up at the end, but it's all so vague. - This is a land of dreams and madness. Some ancient past long forgotten. - Sometimes stories are just stories. - There's nothing human or relatable for me to
latch onto as a viewer. I would've loved an episode
that's just these two and maybe you get a
glimpse into their past and see how he kind of
became a father figure to her and why that relationship matters and maybe you could have even given her any amount of dialogue so she
could have a character trait, besides just brooding all the time. There's only one person on this show who evolves from beginning to end. Sabine starts off as a rebellious padawan who cannot use the force at all and transforms into a rebellious padawan who can use the force a little bit. How does she learn? Does she have some kind of epiphany where we the audience are given a reason for everything to suddenly just click? No, she can't do it, and
then she can't do it, and then she can't do it,
and then she can do it at the time when it was most
convenient to for plot reasons. Out of nowhere, she just does something that she had no ability
to do 30 seconds ago, and then another 30 seconds later, she's using the force again to shove an adult man across a gap the size of a football field. I guess she's a master of this now. There's not a whole lot of
cause and effect in this show. Things don't happen because
something else happened. They happen because it's
time for them to happen. When someone dies, no
one reacts accordingly, to the point where I'm like, "Do they even know what death is? They're aware that it's bad, right?" Also, why is this kid even on
the ship in the first place? What is it, bring your son to war day? I've seen a lot of people try to criticize the actors in this show,
but I'm really not sure how much of it is actually their fault. Like I don't think on her own
that Ahsoka is a bad character or that Rosario Dawson
is bad at playing her, because she plays her the exact same way as she did in one episode
of "The Mandalorian" and I thought she did really good in that. So did almost everybody. So clearly the issues seem
to be more about the context that these characters are put in. In both shows, she's portrayed as this
wise and powerful Jedi and in "The Mandalorian"
it makes sense for her to have that air to her because they write her to have knowledge that Mando doesn't have. He goes to her for information and she delivers it with
the sort of quiet stoicism that makes sense given the circumstances. In her show, not only is it kind of boring for your main character to
talk like that the entire time, but it doesn't really make
sense for her to be that calm while telling Sabine, "Hey, it's okay that you've doomed the entire
galaxy for personal reasons." "It's not a big deal that
millions of people will die because at least you followed your heart." Like, no, that's fucking stupid, but that's how she delivers a line because that's how it was written. I have more to say about this
show and "Obi-Wan Kenobi," but before I get more into that, I have to tell you about
this Star Wars show that is so much better than both of these. It's actually hard to fathom that it takes place
inside the same universe. I think if I can explain
some of the things that "Andor" does really
well, it'll do a better job of showing why "Ahsoka"
and "Kenobi" are so flat in comparison. Before we get to that though, I wanna tell you about
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sponsoring today's video, which I will now continue. It takes like seven minutes for "Andor" to subvert our expectations. Main character gets followed by a couple of antagonistic jerks, they're pestering him,
they've got him cornered, they're trying to rob him,
I've seen where this goes. This is where our protagonist shows off how cool and strong he is. "Who are you?" "The name's Andor and
don't you forget it." But no, that's not
actually how this goes down because that's not who
he is as a character and that's not what this show is. In this show, he has to scrape and claw to get out of a situation like this. It's not smooth, it's brutal and messy and in the process of
trying to defend himself, he accidentally kills one of them. An act that gets treated with the gravity you rarely see in Star Wars. - He's not breathing.
- He's faking. - He's not! Verlo! - Once the other guy shifts
from being pissed off to realizing he now needs to beg for his own life, holy shit! - We had a misunderstanding. We'll go in together. We'll tell them what happened. - [Drew] And it's important to point out that this isn't just a
little action sequence to grab the viewer's attention. This is what drives the show forward. This is the impetus for
everything Cassian does next because he's now a wanted criminal. He's on the run, has to quickly figure out how to earn enough money to
get the hell out of this place. When I say that the
other shows are boring, I'm not asking for more giant battles with a bunch of explosions
and CGI spaceships. We've seen all that before. I'm just asking for what
happens on the screen to mean something. If there are no consequences
when something happens, then it does not matter that it happened. If nothing else, at the very
least, death has to matter. And yet, Star Wars keeps trying
to tell us that it doesn't. When major characters
die, they're only dead until we need them to be alive again. And when minor characters die, no one around them seems to give a shit. So what's the point? "Oh, don't worry about those guys, they're just kind of nothing." - What do you mean the people
were just kind of nothing? - They're just like not
important, like they don't matter. - We also don't need to be
told about the threat posed by the empire in the
show, we can just see it. We're shown what can happen
to a corrupt judicial system with unchecked power. We're shown a prison with
electrified floors they can use to kill anybody for any reason. Like the empire actually
feels terrifying in this show. These TIE fighters, which
are made to be so disposable, so small and insignificant
in the other movies, feel enormous when they fly
by, they're loud and daunting, their presence actually
feels like a threat. In "Ahsoka", we are not shown why we should be scared of Thrawn. We are told that he's this imposing force, we are told that he's
an evil grand admiral who's escape will lead to the
destruction of the galaxy, but those are just words, words contradicted by how
stupid he is in every scene. Every time he attempts to
kill anyone, he fails at it. His plans keep not working and
every time, he's just like, "Actually it's a good thing that we lost." Now that I think about
it, maybe that's why Ahsoka is so nonchalant
about him getting out. It's because she realizes that
he's just a bumbling idiot who painted himself blue. If you want to make the
audience fear your villain, you have to show what they're capable of, not with words, but with actions. Remember this guy? That was kind of his entire thing. In fact, he was at his most
feared when he wasn't talking. And unless you want them to just be evil for the sake of being evil, you have to flesh them
out in some capacity. What are their motivations,
their flaws, their ambitions? A great show will make you
sympathize with the villain. A great show will show you
everybody's perspective so you understand where
they're coming from. A bad show will tell
you, these guys are evil and these guys are good
and that's why they fight. "Andor" takes the time to develop almost all of its characters in ways the other shows simply did not. The first time Cassian's
friend Brasso comes on screen, we are shown the dynamic
of their relationship without one of them having
to just verbally tell us. We can see the concern Brasso has when he notices his bruises, and then Cassian without
explaining himself first starts telling him what
we know to be a lie about what took place last night. - What'd you do when you left? - I went home, cleaned up a
bit and then I fell asleep. - No, we decided we were thirsty and you wanted to go to Cavo's,
but I said that was no good because there's too many
people there I owe money. - [Drew] He starts explaining to Brasso the somewhat convoluted alibi that he needs him to go along with. And without missing a beat, Brasso realizes that his
friend needs his help and agrees to go along with it. - You insulted my choice of beverage. As host and provider,
I was offended by this. You've come here now to apologize. - [Drew] This is a great scene because it serves two purposes. One, it tells us that
what happened last night is not just going to go away and clearly Cassian is worried
about the consequences. And two, it shows us that these two people are good enough friends for one of them to put himself in danger for the other one's sake. From this, we can just
assume a bunch of things about their relationship. Clearly they've known each
other for a long time. They probably have their own history of getting into trouble, but always having each other's backs. I hate when dialogue will try
to accomplish the same thing by just telling you about something that happened off screen. - Cousin. - There's that man whose uncle is my dad. - I haven't seen you
since that mission we did. - The one on Klorpotron? - Yep, where you almost got us killed. - Hey, I'm a great
pilot, but I'm impulsive. - And it's important we say these things out loud to each other. - [Both] Lest we forget. - [Drew] Later on in this episode, they introduced Syril, the imperial deputy who's fucking obsessed with his job. And you can see that immediately
from the way he's standing, from the seriousness with
which he's trying to talk, from the hilarious detail
that he's taken the time to have his suit tailored. - Have you modified your uniform? - Perhaps slightly. - [Drew] Within seconds of
this man appearing on screen, you already understand who he is. What's interesting about this
character and also Dedra, a similar character who
gets introduced later, is that instinctively
you kind of find yourself rooting for both of them, even
though they are the bad guys. And why is that? How could it be that this
asshole comes on screen in his funny little suit and I find myself sympathizing with him? Well, it's because we understand why he's doing the things he's doing. In juxtaposition with
his boss in this scene, he just wants justice, but the company he's
working for is telling him, "No, do not investigate this murder. In fact, don't draw any
attention to it at all because it might make us look bad." So even though we obviously
don't want Andor to get caught, you can still look at the situation from Syril's point of view and be like, "Hey, I mean, he's got a point." Like I don't want Zuko
to capture the Avatar, but once you see what he's been through and why it's so important to him, it makes him feel more human. Seeing someone who thinks
they're doing something for the right reasons is
always way more interesting than someone who's just vaguely evil. It's also important that these characters
are written to be smart because they couldn't have
gotten to where they are if they weren't. They couldn't succeed
in the ways that they do if they were just giant morons our heroes could defeat
without breaking a sweat. When someone comes up
with a plan on this show, it is thorough, they take
months to prepare for it, they have to focus on the
most minute of details because the people they're fighting aren't just dumb and vulnerable, they have to find the tiniest cracks that they can slip through. And even when they plan for months and the objective is overall a success, there are still repercussions. And the empire doesn't
just shrug their shoulders and take it, they use it as an opportunity to amp up their authority. They're not invincible, but
they're pretty close to it. When I was finished watching
all eight episodes of "Ahsoka", I sat back and thought, "What actually happened in this show? What transformations took place from the beginning of
the series to the end?" And it's pretty much just one thing, Thrawn got out, that's it. And sure, we're told that's
a big deal in this universe, but like we needed eight
episodes just to do that? How does something with such a huge budget get stretched so thin? Conversely, when I got to
episode four of "Andor" and he meets up with a group of rebels who tells him about their
plan to pull a grand heist on the planet of Aldhani, I thought, "Oh, cool, so this is
what the whole series is gonna build up to. The season finale will be this mission." And then they rehearsed, executed and dealt with the consequences
of the entire thing by the end of episode six. It was a three episode arc. I was so conditioned
by the other two shows that I just assumed they
would drag this one plot point across the entire season. But the creators of "Andor" knew that they had way more story to tell. You thought this part was good? No, no, no, we haven't even
gotten to the best part yet. The best part of this show is
the Narkina 1 prison sequence. Now, I wanna be careful
how I talk about this because I don't wanna spoil
it, but I am going to spoil it so you've been warned. If you haven't watched this show yet and you're at all intrigued by
it, go watch all 12 episodes and then come back and finish the video. But make sure you come back
'cause then I'll get two views. So Cassian gets taken to this place where the first thing they do is show you how they are in control. If you act out or if you don't do your job or if you do your job, but just slower than everyone else, they will turn on the floors that will electrically shock you. This prison doesn't need
thousands of armed guards to keep you in your place. It has its own built-in security and they're so confident in this system that they don't even feel
like they need to have someone supervise the prisoners when
they go back to their cells, they just assign one of
them to play that role. On Cassian's floor,
that person is Kino Loy. Now, Kino is as much of a company man as a prisoner could be. He is steadfast in his belief that if he just does
everything he's supposed to, that he will be set free
when his number hits zero. It doesn't seem to phase him at all that their sentences are getting doubled or tripled arbitrarily. He's just focused on doing everything he thinks he needs to do
to get outta this place as soon as possible. Now, as Cassian spends
weeks and then months here, he is trying to accrue
any information he can on this prison, but Kino will not budge. - How many guards on each level? - You want out of here alive, turn that part of your mind off. - You think they're listening? You think they care
enough to make an effort? They don't need to care. How many guards on each level? - It's gonna take something
much bigger than Cassian to disillusion this man and that's when a rumor starts to leave. A prisoner on level four
finished his sentence and was supposed to get released, but instead got put right
back into the prison, just on a different floor. And when word started
to spread about this, they killed everyone on that floor just to keep the rest of
the prison from finding out. Around the same time,
an old man named Ulaf, with just a few shifts
left of his sentence, suffers a stroke. A doctor is sent to give
him medical attention, but all he can do is just
put him out of his misery. A now out of commission old man is of no use to the empire in a prison where all that
matters is productivity. While he's there, the
doctor confirms the rumor about what happened on level two, and this is where the
reality of the situation finally sets in for Kino. - No one is getting out! - [Drew] It doesn't matter
how well you play the game when your opponent is
in control of the rules. And one last time, Cassian
asks him the same question. - How many guards on each level? - Never more than 12. - Dude, this shit got me so fired up. I was on my feet, I was
hooting and hollering. I started barking at the TV. This and of course the following episode where they actually break out of prison was so entertaining to watch
and everything that built up to these moments was laid
out and paced so perfectly. This wasn't just good
by Star Wars standards, this was one of the most
enjoyable stretches of television I've seen in years. But, again, all of this
doesn't just happen because they thought it
would be a cool thing to put in a show. This serves a greater
purpose in the overall story. This is the single most
transformative event of Cassian's life. At the beginning of the show, he's approached by this guy Luthen with a chance to join his rebellion and he could not give two shits about it. To him, it's never been
about fighting the empire, he's just trying to survive. His motivation is money and protecting his family, that's it. Sure, there's moments
throughout the Aldhani arc where he starts to get introduced to some other perspectives. He starts showing subtle
signs of leadership. He sees someone who mirrors some of the worst parts of
himself and maybe realizes, "I don't know if that's
the guy I want to be." But even when he is done
with that and he gets paid, he hasn't changed all that much. All he wants to do is take that money and fuck off to space Miami
where he can stay outta trouble. It's not until he's thrown
into this harrowing prison where he can see for himself
how evil these people are. He didn't even get arrested for his double murder by the way. He got a six year sentence for looking suspicious on a beach. Now is where he sees firsthand how subhuman the empire
views everyone to be, that there are prisoners
wasting their lives away, working here motivated only
by the promise of freedom that they don't even realize they'll die before they ever get a taste of. This is the inciting incident that fundamentally changes who he is and that's how you develop a character. It's also such an interesting
story of sacrifice and working towards a larger goal at the expense of what you want. Cassian initially just wants
to be left alone, right? Why is this my problem? But once he realizes not only
how fucked up everything is, but that he may be able
to serve a larger purpose within this movement, he
jumps at the opportunity. Everyone who's a part of this rebellion is sacrificing something to do so, and the result is honestly
kind of beautiful. Luthen, as one of the
leaders of this rebellion, is very much the face of that idea. He has this incredible
speech where he's like, "What do I sacrifice?" - [Both] Everything. - I burned my decency for
someone else's future. I burned my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see. - This isn't about me,
this isn't about us. This is about creating
something for the greater good. And then I just think
about how they made Sabine put the entire galaxy in danger
so she could save one guy. The gap between "Andor" and "Ahsoka" in terms of writing quality is
the size of the Grand Canyon. - Live or die? Time to die. - I choose to live. (audience applauding) - Take all the money you found
and go and find some peace. - I won't have peace. I'll be worried about you all the time. - That's just love. Nothing you can do about that. - What an amazing line to come out of a random Star Wars show. And anytime someone delivers
a monologue in "Andor", it's so inspirational. It makes me wanna run
through a brick wall. - They don't have enough
guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure
that out, it'll be too late. And I would rather die
trying to take them down than giving them what they want. - In "Ahsoka", I feel like
sometimes the writers forgot what universe their show takes place in. There's a scene where
Hera has to have a meeting in front of members of
the intergalactic senate and listen to the reasons they give for not believing her story. - But this report reads
like a child's fairytale. Star maps, star whales, distant galaxies. Honestly, are we to believe any of it? - Dude, you're literally in Star Wars. What are you talking about? "Oh, you want me to believe there's some kind of
other galaxy out there that has some map leading to it? Sounds like bullshit to me. Now, get outta my sight, lime green alien with tentacles for hair." Also, where the creators of "Andor" deliberately avoided gratuitous cameos, the other shows seem to
have been built around them. It's like they feel compelled to dangle a familiar
character in front of us every time they think people
are starting to lose interest. Man, this courtroom scene is boring. I don't even know who
any of these people are. C-3PO, I know that guy! Oh, the whales are back. Wake me up when this is over. Hayden Christensen from "Little Italy?" - What? - I like seeing characters that I know return to the screen, it's fun. I'm not trying to rain
all over your parade if you enjoyed this, but like can there also
be substance with it? Can we raise our standards a little bit? I think if I were to try
to thematically categorize the new Star Wars that works versus the new Star Wars that doesn't, it's that a lot of what doesn't work seems to be taking familiar characters and putting them in a new setting, where what has worked has
mostly done the opposite. I think when you approach
something like the empire and say, "What if we told this story from a brand new perspective?" that's how you can flesh out
something we're familiar with in ways we might have
never even considered. Whereas when you start with a character and then try to pull an
entire show out of your ass, it's gonna be a lot harder to stumble upon a story worth telling. Also, when you make a
spinoff series about a person whose life we are already
intimately familiar with, you lose your ability to use one of the most
fundamental tools of storytelling, character evolution. A bedrock of almost every
good story ever told involves a three-dimensional character who grows and changes in some way. And when you take someone who's already experienced
that in the past, it's hard to do that again without first making them
devolve a little bit, and that's not fun to see. I don't wanna see a
PTSD-ridden Obi-Wan Kenobi scared of conflict, before reverting back into
the guy we thought he was. It's like when you play
the sequel to a video game and they have to come up
with some convoluted way to justify the fact that they
nerfed all your abilities you had at the end of the last game so you can learn them all again. "Oh, he forgot how to use the force." "Yay, he remembered!" On the topic of video games
though, I think that's somewhere where Star Wars has done a pretty good job of expanding on this universe in a worthwhile and additive way, particularly the "Jedi: Fallen Order" and "Jedi: Survivor" games are really fun, even though they did kind
of release the second one in an indefensible state of brokenness. But that's just how games are now. Can't blame us if everyone's doing it. But this game is another example of like, hey, you don't have to just keep using the same four characters
over and over again. Let me experience something new. It can still take place within
a world I'm familiar with, but give me a fresh
protagonist to learn about. Show me Star Wars from
an alternate perspective and let me live inside of it. That more than anything
else, is what takes me back to the feeling that Star
Wars gave me when I was a kid and I think it's something
they desperately need more of. - I got it so easy. Guard the cliff, press the
locals, look at the scenery. Nobody's getting past me,
not without a blaster- - I will forge the way
there in your honor. Time to fight! - But for Star Wars to regain
the reputation it once had, it's going to have to come in the form of consistently good movies and TV shows. And even with as great as "Andor" was, I have no confidence to believe that this is a sign of more things to come because so far this has very much proven to be the exception to the rule. Tony Gilroy came in and showed that when you're not afraid to bring something new to the table, to avoid cheap cameos in
lieu of actual storytelling, to not just follow the
formula created 46 years ago, that you can make something so good that it doesn't even have to
be Star Wars for it to work. Like "Obi-Wan Kenobi" had to be Obi-Wan, "Ahsoka" had to be Ahsoka. The stories that these
shows told were so thin that no one would've
given a shit about them if it wasn't filled with familiar faces. "Andor" is a show that
just happens to take place in the Star Wars universe. And I don't think Disney
is that interested in continuing to tell
those kinds of stories. When I was a kid, I would
think about all the blanks that could be filled in
the Star Wars universe. I thought so excitedly
about all the planets and the monsters and the Jedis out there just doing their thing. It seemed like there were
infinite possibilities. And yet, the more they
expand on this universe, the smaller it starts to feel. Are there more stories to tell or are we just gonna keep finding ways to repackage the old ones? Because if that's the case, I don't know how much
more Star Wars we need.
