Last time we considered whether Andor could save the world.
It does seem like the whole room was built just for this.
At the risk of eating my words in three weeks time, this felt like the odd one out in the season so far. Not, as I saw predicted, a self-contained story but a grouping of some excellent scenes that didn’t quite fit into any of the preceding episodes. It’s enough, I think, to say that the scene with Fiona Shaw was the absolute highlight, a heartbreakingly tragic farce where Andor’s actions in the previous six episodes have alienated her from him in a way he cannot explain. I had full expections that the show was going to go with the trite old ritual of “Oh, I’m secretly ill/infirm/otherwise unable to come with you by virtue of being old” and what happened instead was really good. Special mention as well to the Imperial bureaucracy scenes, a stunning mash-up of the original trilogy’s Imperial Officer scenes with a modern-day KPMG internal presentation.
The whole building bears a passing resemblance to the ancient club Luthen keeps handling.
With that out of the way, we can get down to the one absolutely critical question this episode raises (and a minor corollary to it). That is: when are we going to see Senator Binks?
Jar Jar Binks was so ferociously maligned on the release of the Phantom Menace that his role in the subsequent prequels was trimmed down considerably, but Lucas did retain for him a critical role. Binks is the Senator who — in a repeat of the events of Phantom Menace where Padme played this role — proposes that the Senate grants the Chancellor emergency powers, that he then uses to create the Grand Army and ultimately elevate himself to the position of Emperor.
Small cog, big machine.
Since Mon Mothma’s original intrusion into this series the Coruscant content has only been creeping up. We’ve seen the Senate, the speeders, the endless political hokum. Not noted enough is how much this content, which is of a high quality with much of the rest of Andor, draws almost exclusively from the prequels. Indeed, the spectre of the Emperor which hangs over many of the Coruscant-set scenes can only be understood as the conniving, sophisticated Chancellor Palpatine rather than the seething space wizard from Return of the Jedi.
Andor does diverge — as noticed in droll fashion by twitter commentators — from the stage-like dialogue style of the George Lucas films, instead going for a somewhat naturalistic style, though far from the hyperactive modern blockbuster sensibility the sequel films ended up with. It would be hard to imagine Anakin and Padme’s romantic exchanges intercut with scenes on Ferrix. Jar Jar however, despite having his own dialogue controversy, does not speak in particularly romantic terms. Indeed, given what would be his now long departure from his home world of Naboo for the life of the senator, a broadening of his speak would make sense — one fewer ‘meesa’ here and there.
Below-level Coruscant looks a lot like Heathrow airport, the quintessential British dystopia.
If you’re wondering how the character of an aging politician who has done little in their political career other than inadvertently vote for terrible things might be portrayed, might I suggest the array of colourful characters in the British Parliament.
But perhaps that would be too cynical for poor Jar Jar, who retains a childlike innocence through his appearances that parallels him with Anakin, the other ‘stray’ adopted by Qui-gon Gin during the course of The Phantom Menace. Both Anakin and Jar Jar have a wide-eyed approach to politics that allows them to be manipulated by Palpatine, and while we know that Anakin is enmeshed into the Imperial apparatus long into the future, it would be very neat to see a comfortable Senator Binks do the grunt work of the new Emperor in the Senate — perhaps engaging in some light menacing of Mon Mothma. Alleline, the US-aligned up-and-comer who takes over MI6 in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy isn’t a villain — just someone too unaware to know when he’s being played. That’s how I’d fit Jar Jar in here.
Mon Mothma’s husband is a fascinating character. I hope he ends up doing a Mishima coup or somthing.
Anyhow, idle thoughts.
The corollary is (of course) are we going to see Sheev himself? But I think the answer to that one is “probably, yes”.
Dragging ourselves miserably back to the world of Star Wars, it would be remiss not to mention that having showed us that it could be a better Obi-wan, Andor doesn’t miss a beat in showing us that it could be a better Solo — the tight-knit group of proto-rebels lifting improbably defended Imperial resources being the middle act of that film. It’s a very well executed heist movie, giving us the full Ocean’s 11: here are the cast, here are the pieces, here’s half the plan and here’s one or two wrinkles.
In a fashion that feels ludicrously expensive, the show introduces more new characters for this run of episodes than appeared in Obi-wan in total: for our heist squad, there’s the bossy one, the uptight one, the sleazy one, the intense one, the double agent, and the communist. For the opposition: the double agent (again), a rake of subordinates, the squalid provincial governer, a prestigious colonial administrator on a visit, and a plucky comms officer who is going to be in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.
Stay outdoors, my dude. Going back to your station is not going to go well for you.
Some interesting formalisms at play too, with episode 5 following the spread of different characters through a single extended day, breakfast to dusk — all apparently in the service of a pretty good joke where off-the-board player piece Karn, the antagonist of the first run of episodes, appears to spend the entire day miserably eating one bowl of cereal. Karn’s position in the plot is usurped by a run of scenes of bureaucratic intrigue in the Imperial Spy Ministry (or some such), a larger, snobbier version of Karn’s treasured corporate police.
In an impossibly charming move (in a show that is coming to be defined by the quantity of charming moves it cares to pull off in each episode) the scheme is explained to us over a scale model of the target base, which gets a ceremonial burning the night before the mission that manages to evoke Darth Vader’s funeral pyre.
Interesting is the extent to which the show is happy to play on our pre-knowledge of the character of Andor — obviously as the protagonist he was always going to be likely to have some kind of heart of gold, but the specifics go further. The scene where he reassures the other proto-revolutionaries that tensions always run high the night before a mission seems almost to position Rogue One prior to Andor in the running order. We know this character has experience with rebel missions: we’ve seen him steal the Death Star plans. Cassian’s run of shooting first continues unabated too, all the more pointed with the similarities to Solo.
Skarsgard gets to flex his acting muscles and his facial muscles in his mirror life as the smiling curiosity shop owner — the show again cannily shying away from exactly why such a profession might be prudent for a rebel agent. These scenes introduce Mon Mothma, a vintage Star Wars character who has never really had one, except possibly in the extended universe of books that I never read. These scenes are also set on a returning Coruscant, speeder cars and dining chambers looking every bit as grandiloquent as it was depicted in the Prequels. There’s even a scene in the Imperial senate, which was always an incredible bit of visual design and I was thrilled to see it return. We don’t see who is in position on the centre podium, alas.
Last time turmoil engulfed the Galactic Republic as we discussed episode -3 of Obi-wan, The Phantom Menace.
They better not try and make a big thing out of that Quake logo Rebel Alliance symbol again. I will snap.
So once again we return to these damn Star Wars. It does feel like a joke. Following Obi-wan I swore blind that I was done dipping my toes in the Disney Star War pool, the life-giving waters were certainly all dried up and gone by the time I watched Kenobi face Vader on the exceedingly dark planet of the stalagmites. The problem — it seemed — was that there was simply nothing more to say on the subject of Star Wars. You can pass some time making do-overs, like the sequel trilogy, you can last a while doodling in the gaps as with Solo and Rogue One, and Mandalorian probably warranted a look-in from me eventually but there’s an awful lot of it. Disney’s four-billion-dollar purchase was running along on borrowed time. At some point they were going to try something — like interpolating an alternative follow-up to the prequel trilogy where Vader has some kind of evil daughter who menaces baby Luke — and have it just not work. And so it was.
I found Andor to be a baffling announcement for a series anyway, in the fashion of Michael Bluth hearing about his son’s girlfriend. Really? Him? Don’t get me wrong, Diego Luna was perfectly pleasant in Rogue One, his chemistry with protagonist Felicity Jones papering over any number of cracks in the shooting script. Despite that, he wasn’t an obvious candidate for the extended universe treatment, not just because — spoilers abound — he pops his clogs in the climax of that film, sacrificing himself to the rebel cause. There’s little obvious scope for expanding his story in preference to any of the rest of that cast, many of who were underserved in Rogue One. It almost seemed ridiculous to hope that, even absent the pressure of dealing with a prominent legacy character like Ben Kenobi, the series might flourish. The most we could hope for was that in a post-Obi-wan world, it might be a safer bet to take on characters and relationships that aren’t dripping with potential — if only to save us all the heartbreak.
Him?
I speculated in writing on that series that Obi-wan was an attempt to make a new sequel to Revenge of the Sith in the way that Rogue One had been an attempt to make a new prequel to A New Hope. The insertion of Andor into this genealogy forces us to consider Rogue One insteadas a new Return of the Jedi, the terminal end of a series that’s about to be filled in backwards. This is, inarguably, a George Lucas move. From the prequels to the Clone Wars to the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, George Lucas loves nothing more than starting a series in the middle somewhere. Could this be an authentically positive omen for Andor?
Getting it out of the way straight off, it’s good. I hate it and I wish it weren’t the case but it’s really good. The genius of Andor, at least in this first trilogy of episodes, is that it doesn’t even try. It’s barely Star Wars. Where it could reference Star Wars it often doesn’t — when antagonist Arnold Rimmer addresses a crack team of extremely unpleasant security agents in the second episode, it could be a pastiche of Darth Vader addressing the bounty hunters in Empire Strikes Back, but it isn’t. Instead its Lieutenant Gorman from Aliens trying to give a pep talk to the cops from The Fifth Element. The first episode opens with the titular Cassian Andor (last seen sleepwalking through that terrible reshoot scene for Rogue One where he lets a man climb halfway up a wall before shooting him) in a greasy, grimy neon city that’s Blade Runner by way of Attack of the Clones but separate and distinct from both.
This feels mean.
It seems implausible that we actually see less of this future neon city than we do the party drug planet from Obi-wan given how much more vibrant and coherent it feels — in what will become a running mark of quality, there’s an extended scene of the club bouncer patting Andor down and giving him the house rules before he heads in. These small moments and subtle characters count tenfold in making the setting compelling, and Andor has them in spades: the busybody on the space transport who thinks everything’s crooked, the town bellringer who takes immense pride in his work without saying a single word, the guy who Cassian owes money to who has hired a local shark man to lightly menace him (yes, a loan-shark). These things could all easily be on the cutting room floor, and a persistent complaint I had about Obi-wan was that they invariably were, giving the impression of a world where people only ever talked when they wanted to muse about starting a rebellion.
This is just Wall-E.
The introduction sequence ends with the inciting incident for the plot of this run of three episodes: Andor shoots first. Framed for a crime he totally committed, he desperately tries to get off-planet while paying his debts and looking after his suspiciously sassy mother. A droid that looks like Wall-E to such an extent that Disney would surely sue if this weren’t being made by Disney pleads with him to stay, but no dice, he’s getting his friend who works on pod race engines to ring up Stellen Skarsgård immediately. Interspersed are flashback scenes in which we see that Andor himself comes from a tribe of presumably-indigenous humanoid scavengers on an Imperial planet. That is to say, he is an Ewok.
The antagonism is provided by Inspector Karn, who as I’ve mentioned draws on no-one so much as Red Dwarf’s Arnold Rimmer, a cripplingly insecure, incredibly tedious busybody who serves as deputy inspector for the sub-Imperial corporate police force. He is an absolute delight in every scene, especially once paired with Alex Fern’s toadying fascist sergeant. I can only assume we’re going to see him get promoted to the highest ranks in the course of his Javert-like pursuit of Andor (who, I should note again, is totally guilty).
Boo! Hiss!
It’s not all roses (well, it’s mostly roses). The 40-minute episode format, while I personally prefer it to the prestige TV standard hour makes little sense for a set of three episodes that feel like nothing more than an episode of Sherlock, a show that hugely benefitted from its feature-length runtime. The ending of the second episode is particularly odd, showcasing some dramatic walking that has the air of being test footage. I’m going to try and consider the show to be a run of movies as best as I can, a series of four features. If they’d released it all at once I’d probably have gone back to my old tricks and started at the end.
The action sequence that takes up most of the third episode falls a little flat in places, such as the multiple uses of “a rope coil has suddenly detached from a pillar” maybe making sense from a logical point of view but perhaps not a dramatic one. Much in the tradition of classic Doctor Who however, the bread and butter of the acting is just good enough to make up for it. Watching Skarsgård and Luna bicker over who gets to be mysterious and aloof to who is well worth the price of entry.
Not another one!
The ending of the third episode, where Andor leaves with Skarsgård, is somewhat muted only because we’re having such a great time with the characters established on Ferrix (the name of the planet). I didn’t want to see them go, but I also can’t see how the plot could return to Ferrix without being contrived. We’ll see. Plenty of time to mull things over in the weeks to come.
The tricky thing with Star Wars is, everyone wants to have a lightsaber. You want to have a lightsaber. I want to have a lightsaber. The people making Andor want to have a lightsaber. How long can they maintain the trapeze act of making Star Wars that isn’t primarily influenced by Star Wars? That’s what we’re going to find out, I guess.
Last time we tied up the Obi-wan series, pensive about the ways in which the new era differs from the old.
Prequels are a fraught business; expectations are high and the scope for delivering surprises low. Further still, this is no regular prequel, this is The Prequel, the definite article. Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. It’s where we finally get to see where the Obi-wan Kenobi of A New Hope came from, with his vague anecdotes about the Clone Wars and folksy commitment to an ancient monastic order. Crucially intertwined too, the story of Lord Vader, the impassive man behind the mask — the war hero who became the Emperor’s right-hand man. Finally, the enigmatic story of Padme, mother to Luke and Leia, absent entirely from the original trilogy.
Now as well, this is where we get to see the where the title character of Disney+’s Obi-wan came from. The origin for his principled non-intervention and familiarity with child sidekicks. And the origin of the pained, murderous Vader of that series and his red hot hatred of the noble Jedi Knights. The spectral figure of Leia’s mother, described to Leia as “wise, discerning, kindhearted” which really seem to be burying the lede even for this film.
Finally, although there isn’t the space here to really dig into it, this is the film that crafts fully half of what we consider Star Wars aesthetic, and it looks really great. So much thoughtful design by so many artists went into creating a film that looks unmistakably Star Wars while throwing out an endless succession of new designs.
The senate chamber is a particular triumph.
What is first and most noticeable about The Phantom Menace is that it is a story about slaves. It is bookended with snippets of high drama and action mostly taking place on Naboo, with some laser fights in space and sinister dealings in a humongous senate. The real story however sits squarely in the middle acts of the film, the tale of how young Anakin Skywalker, who will one day grow up to be Darth Vader, was once a starry-eyed slave child. The film makes no bones about this focus — encountering Anakin for the first time, Padme exclaims “you’re a slave?” and Anakin shoots back “I’m a person”.
There is a dramatic structure entirely local to Anakin’s story. You could make three episodes of Obi-wan out of it, were you inclined:
Episode 1, A mysterious cloaked man comes to town and meets Anakin, a precocious young engineer who works for a grumpy alien named Watto. Caught in a sandstorm, Anakin offers the man and his friends refuge, and realises that the man is a Jedi Knight.
Episode 2, the mysterious stranger enlists Anakin to race a pod competitively to win the parts to repair his ship — and the price to free Anakin from Watto. Against all odds, Anakin wins.
Episode 3, a freed Anakin must pack his things and leave his mother, facing up to the reality that his new friend cannot or will not end slavery on Tatooine. As they finally go to leave, the Jedi is attacked by a horned demon with a red laser sword and barely escapes. Anakin looks forward to his new life as a Jedi Knight, swearing to one day return and end slavery once and for all.
The plight of the droids, a slave class to the slave class, is ever-present, from Padme thanking R2D2 to Anakin promising to have Shmi not sell C3P0.
Anakin talks of little else other than his desire to free the slaves, to free his mother, to free himself. He transparently believes that becoming a Jedi will grant him the power to do this, even though the Jedi Order would never allow it. From the moment he catches glimpse of Qui-gon’s laser sword it’s clear that the idea has gripped him. Conversely Qui-gon is fascinated by Anakin, and Neeson does a good, subtle job of portraying him as a man being led on by his instincts against his logical judgement. He reluctantly probes Anakin’s abilities with his mother, he double checks himself by testing Anakin’s blood. Qui-gon wants to be absolutely certain in his supposition when he goes before the council to claim that Anakin is the ‘chosen one’, a myth regarding a figure who can bring balance to the force.
Qui-gon is positively callous in his refusal to assist — telling Anakin’s mother outright: “I didn’t come here to free slaves”. He almost sounds like he’s trying to persuade himself. The force tells him one thing and his Jedi training tells him another; Qui-gon ultimately splits the difference and frees half the slaves, frees Anakin whose route to freedom while tricky is still catered for in the Jedi ideology. Freeing Anakin’s mother would mean contending with the Jedi council’s doctrine of non-attachment and separation, so for Qui-gon it’s ultimately easier to not think about it too hard. In the end he is crucially incapable of seeing slavery as an evil in and of itself worth destroying, and in this failure he dooms the Jedi order.
The return of Qui-Gon.
Qui-gon is an interesting figure from the perspective of the original trilogy: a new addition to the cast, unnamed beforehand, who is formative for all three of our trilogy of protagonists. He trains Obi-wan, teaches Padme to trust the will of the force, and inspires young Anakin. Crucially, he also fails all three: he cannot free Anakin’s mother, he hurriedly concludes Obi-wan’s training to take Anakin as an apprentice, and he abandons Padme once they reach Coruscant to the manipulations of Senator Palpatine. He’s positioned as the best of the Jedi — he is, after all, the one we’re given to follow for the bulk of this film, and the council are a bunch of old fuddy-duddies who can’t see the Sith Lord right under their noses. Qui-gon is our introduction to the functioning Jedi Knight.
Our three protagonists grouped together at the end of the film, set under the gaze of the malevolent Chancellor Palpatine.
Obi-wan’s dubious training is heavily hinted at in the final scenes of the movie, trapped as a forced observer behind a series of red force fields as he watches the sinister Darth Maul slay his tutor. Obi-wan’s rage on the death of Qui-gon is non-too-subtly coded as a reaction of the dark side, the red glow over his face making him a mirror of Maul. His stance behind the force field, tense and anxious, recalls Maul more than it does the quiet meditation of Qui-gon. Somewhat interestingly, Obi-wan’s defeat of Maul is echoed in the final conflict of the Obi-wan series, as Kenobi is thrown by his opponent into a pit, which he is able to channel his intense emotions into vaulting out of.
To some frustration, Qui-gon’s return in Obi-wan amounted to a cameo of a few incoherent sentences. It really would be fascinating to hear his ghostly perspective on how subsequent events to his death played out. The show was unwilling to provide them. Apparently he appears in the Lucas-governed animated series which I haven’t seen.
Love that goofy puppet-mouth though, a good choice for a villain who is literally a puppet.
Phantom Menace is not without flaws; it’s hard to begrudge someone finding the use of accents for the Trade Federationists distasteful. By all accounts Lucas was attempting to address the issue head-on by some dubious means during the design of the characters but the consensus since is definitely that polishing specific cultural indicators off your Fu Manchu villains does not liberate them from being Fu Manchu villains. I found it easier to digest Watto, the slaver who seems to barely live better than his slaves. Watto always struck me as more of a hard-nosed New York guy stereotype than anything else, like Bob Hoskins playing Super Mario — but then I am hardly an appropriate judge to deliver this verdict.
The “I’ve been wondering, what are midichlorians?” conversation is a notable clunker, dialogue-wise. It has the feeling of a late addition, interjected to explicitly explain to audiences that the Jedi can measure the mechanical aspects of using the force via science. This is one of the most interesting and disruptive elements that the prequels wrote in over the top of the original films, making a mockery of Yoda’s airy pronunciation that we are all luminous beings, that the Jedi are a religion of universal spirituality— the Jedi Knights were cracking out the calipers when things got really serious.
The elements of The Phantom Menace that have been much derided in years since the release of the film did not hugely bother me — Jake Lloyd is perfectly competent as child Anakin, certainly by reference to child Leia and child Luke from the Obi-wan series. He’s endearing and filled with childish glee. The ‘yippee’s are a bit much but hardly a cardinal sin. Jar-Jar similarly is a coherent component of the film as the cartoon rabbit who steps in the animal dung. No complaints.
Surprised they never went back and re-rendered Jar-Jar with some more modern materials. He mostly looks acceptable with some occasional dips into ‘unconvincing’ but he’d be a good candidate for a special edition.
The most notable reflection for Obi-wan in The Phantom Menace is the metamorphosis from a story concerned about general evils to a story concerned about a specific evil. Palpatine announces to Padme that “the Republic is not what it once was,” that the system that governed the galaxy has lost its power and its way, setting the stage for his ascension to the Supreme Chancellorship, and thereafter the Empire: The Empire is an answer for this chaos we see, manufactured though some of it is. Palpatine has manoeuvred the Trade Federation, to be sure, but the Senate’s inability to decisively resolve the conflict is authentic. Their inability to tackle slavery on Naboo is authentic. It is a failing government, and the Jedi are papering the cracks for it, pressed into the nakedly corrupt position of being sent out as the Supreme Chancellor’s enforcers at the start of the film.
Obi-wan’s focus on the Empire as a state oppressing the Jedi is completely alien to this film. It is unthinkable. An untrained Jedi child is no more threat to the Empire than is Sebulba — Anakin’s force sensitivity could easily be left to rot on the vine to no large calamity, and the possibility of doing so is seriously considered by all involved. Being ‘force-sensitive’ is treated with all the awe of being found to be ‘maths-sensitive’, an advantage in many fields but really only an indicator of potential. The decision whether or not to train him is what will make the difference. This butts uncomfortably against Obi-wan’s ingrained notion of the Jedi identity, rescuing Jedi children, the rebellion helping prevent the Empire from rooting out unknowing Jedi. That story simply is not this story.
The Empire, lurking.
Furthermore The Empire itself, even here, is the Republic’s dirty secret. Qui-gon, Kenobi and Maul push from the picturesque halls of the Naboo palace into the back rooms and find the Empire waiting there for them, gleaming floors and bannister-free walkways aplenty. There is continuity between the gilding of the dying Republic and its Jedi enforcers and the Empire — and this first prequel is unconditional about this. When Anakin, defeated, tells Obi-wan that he is not responsible for creating Vader, Obi-wan has created the entire Empire, insofar as every Jedi created the entire Empire. To ‘rebel’ against it from this position is incoherent: the Rebellion should scorn all Jedis.
Anakin ends the film in the traditional garb of the learner Jedi.
