Sunday Pages: "Andor"

A television series by Tony Gilroy.

The original Star Wars movie, the one now called Episode IV: A New Hope by the franchise producers and no one else, came out in 1977. I was four and a half years old. I didn’t see it until years later, when a family friend brought over a primitive VCR big enough to strap onto Boba Fett’s back, and we all gathered in the den, amazed that we could watch an actual movie in the comfort of our own home.

I dimly recall the whole family going to a theater down the shore to see The Empire Strikes Back in the summer of ‘82—I was nine and a half, my little brother just five—but the Star Wars film I vividly remember was the much-maligned but underrated Return of the Jedi (i.e., the one with the Ewoks). That one came out in 1983, when I was just awakening to pop culture. Jedi is about Luke Skywalker kicking ass, and Star Wars is at its best when Luke Skywalker is kicking ass, as that last episode of the second season of The Mandalorian reminds us.

In the dead years after Jedi, there were persistent rumors of a new Star Wars installment. I remember some kid at the pool telling me, maybe the summer after sixth grade, that the next film was going to be a prequel (he got that part right), and that Tom Cruise, of Risky Business fame, was slated to play Anakin Skywalker. I have no idea who this kid was, or how, in the days before the internet, he came to acquire this inside intel. But he was adamant about it.

Whether or not a Tom Cruise Star Wars was on some producer’s whiteboard, it did not come to pass. But I will die on this hill: young Tom Cruise as Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader would have been the pinnacle of all things Star Wars. As a human, the guy is problematic; as an actor, he is the absolute best at what he does. Think about the earnest, wide-eyed, overcaffeinated Tom Cruise, how into the nutty Jedi religion he would be. Now think about Tom Cruise as the vampire Lestat, a glimpse of how he would operate when the Dark Side got to him. Now picture him in his mid twenties, and give him some droids and a lightsaber.

We were all cheated. I’m still mad about this.

In the event, the prequel finally dropped in 1999, some fifteen years after the kid at the pool leaked its existence. It was called The Phantom Menace, and when we consider the time spent preparing for it, the virtually unlimited budget at their disposal, and the fact that any writer or actor on Earth—or, heck, on Tattooine, Hoth, or Alderaan, too—would have lined up to work with George Lucas on a new Star Wars, this may well be the worst movie of all time. Wooden acting. Wretched dialogue. Convoluted plot. Ho-hum special effects. A yawn-fest of galactic proportions.

Consequently, I’m not well versed in the post-1983 Star Wars galaxy. I don’t know from the various Darths, or how the imperial Senate works, or the names of the planets. I dug The Mandolorian until it fell apart in the third season, but there was too much cringe for me to get fully lost in that world. (Also, why a helmet on all the time? Do they wear helmets when they make love? Does anyone in the weirdly sterile Star Wars universe ever make love? This is not The Way.) When we watched Andor, then, at a friend’s suggestion, I did not know that this was a prequel from Rogue One, because I hadn’t seen Rogue One. Whatever fan service might exist in Andor went over my head. I don’t even know the names of most of the characters, because they are silly, disposable names. This did not hamper my enjoyment of the show, which is hands-down the best Star Wars property since the Empire struck back.

At first, the eponymous Cassian Andor, played beautifully by Diego Luna, looks and sounds and acts so much like Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride that it felt intentional. (This is not a bad thing, because who doesn’t love Inigo Montoya?) But the character rounds out into something moving and real. The series involves his hero’s journey from mercenary scoundrel to ardent revolutionary: from and/or to all in.

Andor—the brainchild of Tony Gilroy, who among many other things wrote and directed Michael Clayton, one of my favorite films of recent vintage—is more spy thriller than sci-fi proper. The art direction is off the charts, every frame gorgeous; even the prison looks stunning. The series is, above all, about the fight against fascism—and thus, highly relevant to 2023 America. The world is complex and layered, the motivations nuanced. The villains believe absolutely in the righteousness and the might of the Empire; they are not evil as much as overzealous and inflexible. Conspicuously absent are the stuffed-animal-looking alien creatures and the Jedi mind-tricks and The Force. The leader of the rebellion turns out to be—mirabile dictu—a coin dealer! There are spaceships and blasters and stuff, but these are human characters, interacting in peculiarly human ways—but, you know, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

The first season came out a year ago. The second and final season is supposed to drop early in 2024, depending on the resolution of the SAG-AFTRA strike (which Cassian Andor and friends would absolutely support). We are at the midpoint of the story. So I cannot spoil the ending, because I don’t know what happens, and I will not spoil the rest. All I’ll say is that Gilroy leans into the star wars. Even in the original film, there was a Rebel Alliance rising up against an Empire fueled by the Dark Side. That remains the case here, but the rebellion is much more realistic and three-dimensional. We really feel the oppression of the Empire in ways that those early motion pictures couldn’t quite convey—even as Darth Vader was making Princess Leia watch as he blew up her home planet. And we feel the awful sacrifices made by the rebels as well.

One of the minor characters in Andor writes a manifesto. He’s a True Believer, grappling with big ideas about tyranny and democracy. (His comrades indulge him but regard him as something of a kook.) In the last episode of Season One, we get to hear a small snippet of that manifesto. I can’t stop thinking about it. This is what I want to share for today’s “Sunday Pages,” as it is applicable to today’s fight against fascism, whether in Ukraine, or North Korea, or here in the United States. It is, in every sense of the world, universal:

There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy.

Remember this: Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies—battalions—that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause.

Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.

And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that.

And know this: the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance, will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority, and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege.

Remember this: Try.

May the Force be with you.

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ICYMI

Our guest on The Five 8 was Jim Campbell:

And we dropped this #NotTooOld video:

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Photo credit: Disney+.