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It looks like Star Wars finally realized the best way to make a genre show is to cram it into the tropes of other genres. This is a lesson Marvel learned long ago. You don't make Super Hero Movies, instead you make heist movies, buddy movies, sci-fi movies, WWII movies, and other genres with Super Heroes in them.

This looks like is will be a spy show..... IN SPACE! Good idea.

They're going a bit further than genre shenanigans. They're definitely a 'feth movies' vibe from the various people. They're framing it as doing a show with the same quality as a feature film, but I get a definite sense that this is new reality- replacing movies with a short series in X parts (8 or 12 or whatever).

They can come back to it or spin off it, or whatever. Hopefully it will let them break away from some of the formulaic gak that infests films.

I think Disney learned the wrong lesson from Mandalorian.

It's not a matter of subjects, or scope. It is a matter of productions for the sake of productions vs stuff with artist behind and artistic value.

I forecast that, 5-6 years from now, the situation of the TV series will become desolating as is for the movie right now.

I see where you’re coming from, and agree to a certain extent.

But, I reckon the sheer size of the Star Wars Galaxy, and the various eras in play will see them right.

Plus, these shows are lower risk. The Mandalorian started off with a reported $15,000,000 per episode budget.

Now, that’s not chicken feed by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s still, per season, cheaper than a movie.

The advertising costs are also going to be cheaper, as they share it with the rest of Disney+.

With comparatively little at stake, they may be open to taking greater risks in terms of narrative etc.

And in terms of budget? Anything set Empire to RoS can to many degrees share sets, models and props in general - lowering the overall costs, even if it’s by increments.

Plus, I can’t see Mr Filoni keeping his Midas Touch off these series. He knows what he’s doing, that bloke.

Also, if you think Disney isn't going to start mass producing that TV screen room to make all their shows/movies way cheaper then you are just out of your mind. Mandalorian pioneered a fantastic new tech that is going to see much wider use. A up front expense that can then be used indefinitely for relatively little long term cost.

True that. With their coffers, and Disney+ doing gangbusters, they’ve a chance to create a new Industry Standard - which will allow them to flog the shiny new toy to other production companies.

And speaking of new toys....let’s not forget the Mando (well, Grogu) seems to have revitalised the merchandise.

See, for a while toy sales have been down across the board. Casualty of the modern world and that. Not to mention even a more than casual collector such as myself being very disappointed in Hasbro’s standard line of figures.

This was to the point where Disney (maybe a pinch of salt for the next bit) didn’t expect people to go mental, and took a while to actually get The Child branded merchandise out to Grogu’s adoring public. Even people who haven’t seen the show (my Missuses daughters being an example) can’t get enough of the little green sod.

Each of these shows brings further marketing opportunities - and that has always been where Star Ward makes it big bucks.

Personally, I don't give a single gak about this Andor show.

We know where it goes. The rebellion beats the empire. We know where this character goes. He joins rogue one and dies. The biggest issue with all these middle ground series/episodes is that they have no tension or stakes. They need to be about NEW characters so we can be invested in them and what happens to them. We don't have that with Andor as the lead. Rebels works because we care what happens to the cast of Rebels and any of them could suffer or die. We care about the episodes of clone wars that got away from Obi and Anakin or focused on other new characters (Bo Katan and such) because we don't know where they end up in the after math of the clone wars. But the more the show focused on Anakin or Obi the harder it is to give a gak. I KNOW obi is fine. I KNOW Anakin is going to go roll in a fire. I DONT know whats going to happen to Ahsoka. SHES the character I give a crap about. Rex and the other clones could die in any episode and nobody knew what happened to them after the war ended.

So what is Andor bringing to the table for me to care about?

Haven't got the interest in neither The Mandalorian nor this new series.

I've mostly enjoyed the last five Disney movies and loved Rebels, but I feel thats it for me. Rise of Skywalker wrapped things up well enough and the only mystery left is what happened to Thrawn and Ezra. Apparently The Mandalorian is exploring that but not subbing to Disney+ just to find out. They could be good shows for all I know, but all I'm seeing in The Mandalorian's sales pitch is "Baby Yoda" and little else. No idea what the conflict is or what its got to do with Mandalorians. I assume Mando is on some journey to find the little green one a master?

Dunno. I'm happy to leave it here though.

Disney + is pretty sparse for some now, but with the Marvel shows and the rumored 17+ tab or whatever they are going to call it where all the fox properties will go it should become a much stronger service.

It will be great to watch It's Always Sunny, Aliens, Preds and the like, Marvel, Disney, Muppets, Starwars all on the one service.

 Lance845 wrote:
Personally, I don't give a single gak about this Andor show.

We know where it goes. The rebellion beats the empire. We know where this character goes. He joins rogue one and dies. The biggest issue with all these middle ground series/episodes is that they have no tension or stakes. They need to be about NEW characters so we can be invested in them and what happens to them. We don't have that with Andor as the lead. Rebels works because we care what happens to the cast of Rebels and any of them could suffer or die. We care about the episodes of clone wars that got away from Obi and Anakin or focused on other new characters (Bo Katan and such) because we don't know where they end up in the after math of the clone wars. But the more the show focused on Anakin or Obi the harder it is to give a gak. I KNOW obi is fine. I KNOW Anakin is going to go roll in a fire. I DONT know whats going to happen to Ahsoka. SHES the character I give a crap about. Rex and the other clones could die in any episode and nobody knew what happened to them after the war ended.

So what is Andor bringing to the table for me to care about?

Well, knowing where things are going doesn't bother me much (elsewise history and a lot of formulaic entertainment is completely lost) so I'm lost on all this 'we know/care. 'How' a story is told is more important to me than not knowing the end (because honestly there are very few shows where I can't predict the end), but I think the main thing 'Andor' brings to the table is Cassian is a garbage human being that just happens to work for the Alliance. Which... isn't good.

Yes, realistic compromises in espionage and all that. But the show is either going to have his descent into casual betrayal (where we see him at the start of R1) or even worse he'll simple start in that state. And we get to pretend either way that the slightly older actor is a younger version of the person we've already seen, which is always an extra strain on the ol' suspension of disbelief.
But the 'even heroes have dirty hands' isn't really the show I want right now.


The worldbuilding might be interesting though. The station Cassian starts out on and the desert Jedi temple city added a lot to Rogue One.

It's been ILM's thing for a few decades now.
Develop the tech, then release it. They had to do it for Star Wars because at the time, Fox had just scrapped their FX department. They designed and built the motion control setup for SW. A more modern version of the same thing is used for Mando. John Knoll had been building motion control systems for decades.
The VFX team including John Knoll developed software to realise the morphing tech for The Abyss and T2.

I know they're building at least 3 more "Volume" sets (and I think Sydney's one is finished and ready to go).
Sydney's Fox Studios has one (some of the marvel stuff will be filmed in Sydney.)
Disney/Lucasfilm has two of them in California.

Melbourne's docklands studios have a similar setup going.
Rebellion in the UK (Dredd and 2000AD owners) have a similar setup that they will be using for MC1.

Given how much they're investing in sets and costumes and the volume of shows they're planning, I have to think that they intend to use these resources across multiple shows/stories/episodes. With the focus away from movies if they can re-use resources they've already invested time and money into, it just spreads out the cost and earns a better return on that investment.

That being said, SPOILER:

Agree with both Lance and Voss.

It’s not just a matter of knowing what eventually happens to a character. The deeper problem is, I don’t care about the character. He’s boring, at least in Rogue One. So this is either going to be a show about how an interesting character became a boring one or it will be about how he was always boring. Neither is a good prospect.

So let’s say this show portrays Andor as more interesting than the non-character he is in R1. Well, then we run into Voss’s point, where we have a show about someone who is a creep. I am not on board for a lengthy exploration about whether it is justified to do terrible things for a good cause. Spoiler alert, it isn’t.

Depends what they do with it.

Not only do I love Rogue One for giving us possibly the best ever Star Wars battle (it’s Scariff or Endor for me), but also for showing how, pre-Alderaan, the Rebel Alliance lacked solid unity.

You’ve got Saw’s partisans being every bit as callous as the Empire, Mon Mothma seriously concerned about open war, and in the middle? Andor doing what needs to be done - including killing an informant for the sake of the Rebellion.

I’m hoping the series leans into this more. Show the Rebellion wasn’t completely squeaky clean. Leave questions about the morality of some missions and tactics etc.

Scariff or Endor?

You’re serious?

Now, I will agree that one of the most interesting elements of R1 was the fractious internal politics of the Alliance.

BUT what made this interesting certainly was not that it might be morally compromised.

The interesting part is political rather than directly moral. Prior to the construction of the Death Star, the movement was conflicted and unfocused. Its CW-era roots were fundamentally conservative: to save the sovereignty of systems that voluntarily participate in the Republic from the authoritarian and centralizing rule of Chancellor Palpatine. On the other hand, you had a far more radical strain of thought that wasn’t necessarily committed to restoring the Republic in the wake of its fall but rather was focused on just resisting and ultimately destroying the Empire.

Prior to ANH, the more conservative partisans viewed the best and most practical approach to be senatorial politics. Meanwhile, the radicals favored flat out terrorism. The former were probably principally motivated by trying to preserve their existing power. The latter were motivated deep down by hatred resulting from personal losses and suffering. In a word, both positions are oriented to the past.

Mon Mothma, however, had a vision for the future. She was not interested in taking vengeance for past wrongs nor in merely trying to go back to the conventional way things were before the Dark Times. She realized history had moved on; new solutions were needed for these new times.

The construction of the Death Star is of course the proof that everything had changed: it proved the Emperor did not have any real interest in governing the galaxy. The Empire was just a massive criminal enterprise designed to extort resources from its victims at literal gunpoint, where the gun in question could destroy a planet.

In the face of this, what would be needed was not simply the amoral skullduggery of the rotting Republic nor just some equal and opposing application of horror and violence by fanatical guerrillas. What would be needed was, in a word, legitimacy. A government that actually serves the needs of the governed, who in turn freely consent to being governed.

The concept art was the coolest part of that video, especially seeing the breaker yards which might see a trip to Bracca in the series.

That being said, not overly interested in Cassian Andor, and I liked Rogue One.

This is my other big issue with all the Starwars announced shows. None of these look like limited series.

The Marvel shows are all limited series (besides episodic things like What If..? which has no singular narrative to tell). We have x story to tell in 6-10 episodes and we are making this show to tell that story. These don't look like they are being made to be ongoing series with seasonal arks. They are an episode in the greater narrative of the MCU and maybe that character will get another limited series later or maybe they won't depending on the needs of the greater narrative. It's basically perfect.

But the Mondalorian isn't that. The Mandalorian is closer to traditional TV with seasonal stories that will one day get canceled or keep on keeping on.

What about Andor? Ahsoka? Rogue Squadron? Does anyone get the impression that these are limited series being used to tell a singular story in a more long form storytelling format or do these look like a bunch of ongoing series they are going to put a bunch of filler episodes in the middle of and drag things out and tie things together and then make another season after?

Lucasfilm is taking ALL the wrong lessons from Marvel.

The Mandalorian is leading towards 'something' - it and the Ahsoka and...one other series will tie together and have a big ending movie/series/something....

 Lance845 wrote:
This is my other big issue with all the Starwars announced shows. None of these look like limited series.

The Marvel shows are all limited series (besides episodic things like What If..? which has no singular narrative to tell). We have x story to tell in 6-10 episodes and we are making this show to tell that story. These don't look like they are being made to be ongoing series with seasonal arks. They are an episode in the greater narrative of the MCU and maybe that character will get another limited series later or maybe they won't depending on the needs of the greater narrative. It's basically perfect.

But the Mondalorian isn't that. The Mandalorian is closer to traditional TV with seasonal stories that will one day get canceled or keep on keeping on.

What about Andor? Ahsoka? Rogue Squadron? Does anyone get the impression that these are limited series being used to tell a singular story in a more long form storytelling format or do these look like a bunch of ongoing series they are going to put a bunch of filler episodes in the middle of and drag things out and tie things together and then make another season after?

Lucasfilm is taking ALL the wrong lessons from Marvel.

except that Filoni has mostly proven capable of delviering a strong end to a series with SW Rebels.

On the tech, a interesting aspect is that IS NOT copyrightable.
It's simply a smart combination of screens, 3d rendering with Unreal Engine, careful scenography and motion tracking, without any specific technology or patent.

What eventually Disney is building is skillset and competence, but for once, there isn't any particular economic interest at place... Simply a good idea.

(Aside from the attention to detail and the sheer size, it's a kind of setup any of use can create in a garage with a (comparatively) small investment.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
This is my other big issue with all the Starwars announced shows. None of these look like limited series.

The Marvel shows are all limited series (besides episodic things like What If..? which has no singular narrative to tell). We have x story to tell in 6-10 episodes and we are making this show to tell that story. These don't look like they are being made to be ongoing series with seasonal arks. They are an episode in the greater narrative of the MCU and maybe that character will get another limited series later or maybe they won't depending on the needs of the greater narrative. It's basically perfect.

But the Mondalorian isn't that. The Mandalorian is closer to traditional TV with seasonal stories that will one day get canceled or keep on keeping on.

What about Andor? Ahsoka? Rogue Squadron? Does anyone get the impression that these are limited series being used to tell a singular story in a more long form storytelling format or do these look like a bunch of ongoing series they are going to put a bunch of filler episodes in the middle of and drag things out and tie things together and then make another season after?

Lucasfilm is taking ALL the wrong lessons from Marvel.

except that Filoni has mostly proven capable of delviering a strong end to a series with SW Rebels.

Uh, what? Space whales taking characters away from the movie plots until they can be re-inserted without retcons isn't a 'strong end.'
Its pretty much the definition of the 'Put on a Bus' cliche.
Except with space whales, making it dumber.

Yeah... Gunna have to disagree there. And every time they go back to tell a story that takes place in-between movies we have to wrap up that series going "And now it's time to move all the major characters off the board before the next movie shows up otherwise we all have hard questions to answer".