Well, it’s out. Another bit of Star Wars content on Disney+ keep us subscribed. I have seen the first three episodes, so here our review. Here is the one line summary. Andor isn’t terrible, but it’s nothing amazing either.
It’s a prequel to a prequel where everyone dies, so there’s no real danger for Andor anywhere and all we are going to get is how he became the man he is.
In preparation for this, I did watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story again on Monday. In the first five minutes of that we learned that Andor is OK with killing someone to save his own skin. I get that there is a greater good, but it’s still pretty ruthless.
So he’s a guy who will do whatever it takes to get the job done, but I still don’t really get why they are making an entire series about him. I will be dipping into spoilers, but nothing major, as I can sum up the first three episodes in one word: filler. We find out:
- Cassian grew up on a mining planet and got taken by ‘old lady’ Maarva – obviously there will be more flashbacks in the series
- He’s got a hot ally called Bix
- He is wanted for past crimes against the Empire, that we never see
- He’s now wanted for killing two low level space mall cops
That’s about it, there isn’t much else to say. At the end of the third episode, he meets up with Stellen Skasgard and it looks like he will lead them to the main rebellion.
I can’t really break down each episode, since there isn’t much to break down to be honest. It was a very slow set up to the characters. Overall, the series doesn’t feel very Star Wars-y to me, I mean, I don’t need a mo-fo to carry a lightsabre, and I doubt we will see one in this series. In The Mandalorian at least you had that classic armor which is very Star Wars.
Even a familiar droid would help, but no, it seems all new productions have to have new droids, ships, and armor that we have never seen before. Maarva has a droid, which could have been a BB unit or an R2 unit, but no, it’s a new one. It’s like they only want to sell you the toys of the things.
The casting is OK. Diego Luna is pretty good as Andor himself, although he’s not really got much to do. I did find the casting of people like Alex Ferns as Sgt. Kostek a bit odd, the leader of a crack unit ready to hunt down anyone… who looks like he hasn’t been in a gym for years.
I also liked how he is a stickler for the rules, but then they have him drinking on the job with a rifle in hand. The effects are good. You feel how dirty the places are that they are working in, and I didn’t see any dodgy CGI in any of the episodes.
The music is very lacklustre. Watching Rogue One again, I remembered just how good the score is. In Andor I couldn’t hum you the tune.
I give Episodes 1 – 3 an average 2.5 out of 5. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s OK. If the episodes were an hour each, the score would be lower, but since they are only 30 minutes it’s watchable. I will carry on, but only for the sake of doing a review here. I am not sure I would be committed enough otherwise.
Yoda, Matt and myself will be sitting down a making a video on this, so those guys might have differing opinions, which could be interesting. Other than that, Andor is a perfectly average series from Disney.
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