[0:00] Hello, I'm tired you guys.
[0:04] Those Asimov videos took way longer than I thought they were going to
[0:08] take so I thought to myself, I'll take it easy for once.
[0:12] I'll make a nice, short, and sweet little Star Wars video and look where we are.
[0:18] Don't look at the time code, don't worry.
[0:21] It's still a video essay that I meticulously
[0:22] scripted because I don't know how to do anything else.
[0:25] I'm Sage, by the way. I make the videos but I don't
[0:27] usually appear in them. Do I look good?
[0:29] Is that what all the comments are going to be about?
[0:31] I guess it doesn't matter if I look good,
[0:32] what matters is that I'm cozy during the filming of the video.
[0:36] A while back my Internet friend and host of Beyond The Screenplay, Tricia Aurand,
[0:40] made this fun little timeline of Star Wars media in order of release
[0:43] terming the current era as the franchise era exhaustive period because
[0:47] the glut of Star Wars media over the last few years has truly felt
[0:50] exhausting, but also it's felt exhausting in exactly the same ways,
[0:55] which is what makes it an era that we can put a box around
[0:57] and notice what makes it different from what came before
[1:00] and also from what's happening now because with
[1:03] the release of Andor the exhaustive period is over.
[1:06] I really think when we look back and try to define this era of Star Wars,
[1:09] Andor is going to be an inflection point.
[1:12] There will be a pre-Andor which we can call the Andor Era because he was a part of it and
[1:18] there will be a post-Andor which we can call
[1:20] the Andor Era because he's the best part of it.
[1:24] It's up to me to contemporaneously and preemptively define
[1:27] what both represent because I've deemed myself in charge of this.
[1:31] You can just do that on the Internet.
[1:33] It's an endless game of dibs.
[1:35] What qualities define each period and which is better?
[1:39] Andor and/or Andor?
[1:42] There's three trends that Star Wars was settling into that I want to talk about,
[1:46] trends that Andor is a departure from.
[1:48] These are how it uses fan service,
[1:50] the filmmaking craft on display,
[1:52] and the extent to which they engage with political themes.
[1:58] What happens when a story becomes so self-referential
[2:02] that it ceases to have a self to reference?
[2:05] What happens when an [inaudible] rose finishes eating itself?
[2:09] The pre-Andor Disney era of Star Wars was, in my opinion,
[2:12] disappearing into its own love of a particular splice of Star Wars.
[2:16] I watched the Obi-Wan show this summer out of
[2:19] some morbid curiosity because I really didn't enjoy my time with the Boba Fett show.
[2:23] Obi-Wan is at least a much more coherently structured story
[2:27] but it also suffers from the same fixation on fan surface,
[2:30] a myopic focus on the same three or four characters
[2:33] whose relationships cannot fundamentally
[2:35] change because of the weight of the canon surrounding them.
[2:38] The few relationships that are allowed to be
[2:40] dynamic are retreads of relationships we've seen before.
[2:43] An old guy has to take care of a kid,
[2:46] a bad guy has a redemption arc.
[2:48] The ground is so well-trod it's a highway.
[2:50] Fan service is great marketing, but it is also constricting.
[2:55] Let's take a look at the second season of The Mandalorian.
[2:57] It's a fun, little adventure with
[2:59] a really phenomenal ending before they undid it in the next show.
[3:02] But looking back on it, it seems entirely designed
[3:05] as a way to link together as many cameos as possible.
[3:08] The characters run into Bo-Katan which leads them to Ahsoka,
[3:11] who talks about Thrawn and then they run into Boba Fett
[3:14] and the whole thing ends with Luke Skywalker saving the day.
[3:17] Nearly every single episode has the feel of being designed
[3:20] backwards from the intent of incorporating all of these cameos.
[3:24] It gets stale to the point that Pedro Pascal actually did need to clarify that, yes,
[3:29] Season 3 would include new faces.
[3:32] What other franchise would ever need to clarify that?
[3:35] I promise there will indeed be flippering moments of time in the next season
[3:39] that don't feel like completely cynical retreads of previous stories.
[3:42] The Mandalorian himself then entered the pantheon of cameos
[3:45] by basically hijacking the last two episodes of the Boba Fett show.
[3:48] By that point, the story structure of that show was already irrevocably broken with
[3:52] overlong flashbacks that were more interesting than the main story
[3:55] but sapped any forward momentum that the main story could have built.
[3:59] It's welcome reprieve to have Mando show
[4:01] up, but that's not to the show's credit that it was
[4:03] so uninteresting and shallow that it needed to be
[4:05] rescued by a different popular helmeted guy.
[4:07] By the end of the show, all that's left is watching
[4:09] a sequel's character fight a prequelish robot while in
[4:12] original's character rides an
[4:13] original's monster and then fights an animated show character.
[4:17] The metaphor of a child smashing his toys together is
[4:19] overused in criticism but how else do you even describe this?
[4:22] But you know at least those are characters.
[4:24] The worst is when Star Wars and its fans fetishize props.
[4:28] I feel like I'm living in a bizarre world when I see people talking about
[4:31] nostalgic callbacks and references to props and sets in these shows.
[4:35] Look at this article which is about how in an episode
[4:38] of the Boba Fett show The Mandalorian holds up a pipe
[4:41] and you see that's the same pipe that Han uses in the garbage compactors scene.
[4:49] If references to other Star Wars media wasn't enough,
[4:52] Obi-Wan takes the self-referentiality of the franchise to
[4:56] a new meta-level in its finale right here.
[5:00] Hello there.
[5:01] Now, if you're a normal person you just heard a guy say a totally innocuous phrase.
[5:05] But if you're terminally online,
[5:06] is that still going to be a phrase of Twitter, guys?
[5:08] Are you following me on Twitter?
[5:09] But if you're terminally online, then you know it's not just a greeting.
[5:12] See, back in 1976, Obi-Wan said,
[5:16] Hello there.
[5:17] Then I guess as a reference to that,
[5:18] in 2005, Obi-Wan said,
[5:21] Hello there.
[5:22] For a few years nobody cared.
[5:24] But then the Internet decided that
[5:25] literally every frame and pixel of the prequel trilogy was worthy of
[5:28] its own meme so in Obi-Wan when a scene dramatically ends with him saying,
[5:32] "Hello there."
[5:32] It's not just a reference to this and this but to all of these,
[5:36] which is what makes this what TV Tropes calls and ascended meme for when the creators of
[5:40] a work recognize and incorporate memes of that work in future installments.
[5:45] But it's a bad name because memes should not ascend,
[5:48] memes should sit down in the mud where they belong.
[5:50] The better term coined by my friend, Patrick H. Willems,
[5:52] is juggernauting, named after this moment in X-Men 3.
[5:56] I'm the Juggernaut bitch.
[5:58] What's most annoying about this moment to me isn't its existence but its placement.
[6:02] It's the last line of a scene in
[6:04] the last episode that is supposed to bring emotional closure to the story.
[6:09] Obi-Wan finally gets to talk to Luke.
[6:11] I should be feeling things here, but I can't because they're
[6:15] too eager to wink and nod at me to sell the moment on its own merit.
[6:19] By the term Obi-Wan ended I was really asking myself,
[6:22] what are we doing here?
[6:24] Really, is this the fate of Star Wars,
[6:26] an endless recursive loop of the same symbols repeated forever and ever into infinity?
[6:30] But then Andor happened.
[6:38] We didn't do anything that was fan service.
[6:41] The mandate in the very beginning was that it would be as
[6:43] absolutely non-cynical as it could possibly be,
[6:46] that the show would just be real and honest.
[6:52] That's from the showrunner of Andor, Tony Gilroy.
[6:56] Boy, did they deliver on this.
[6:58] Andor is absolutely in the spirit of
[7:01] Star Wars without just reproducing what Star Wars was.
[7:04] Once again, we go to Coruscant, but it's different.
[7:07] Fascism has stripped the beauty of the planet and made it a drab
[7:11] nightmare of endless stone corridors and eerily pristine boardrooms.
[7:15] Ferrix evokes the griminess of Tatooine, but is colder and distinct.
[7:19] One of the few times it has a reference to
[7:21] other Star Wars is when the fasci, boot-licking cop,
[7:25] I'm going to say fascism a lot in this video,
[7:27] so take a drink or whatever,
[7:29] loses his job and is reduced to living with his mother where he drinks blue milk.
[7:34] It's a punishment.
[7:36] Drinking blue milk is a punishment for this character.
[7:40] The show is so bereft of this fan service that
[7:43] the entire media ecosystem built up around pointing at Easter eggs and saying,
[7:47] "Did you catch that?"
[7:49] was so absolutely starving for
[7:50] sweet sweet hashtag content that they were reduced to this.
[7:54] Did you catch this Star Wars Easter egg in the latest episode of Andorra,
[7:57] we can see clearly that the ISP is recording this conversation.
[8:00] We know this because of these space surveillance cameras.
[8:03] Han, Luke, and Chewie blasted a bunch of identical-looking cameras when they
[8:06] storm the detention block of the original Death Star in a new hope.
[8:09] Is a silly thing to harp on,
[8:10] but you're not supposed to catch this as a reference.
[8:14] The point of them here is so your brain instantly
[8:16] groks that you're looking at an imperial location,
[8:18] so that you can then pay attention to the scene at hand.
[8:22] You're forgetting to do the important part or maybe you're not. I don't know you.
[8:26] I also think the fact that Andor doesn't have to spend time on Easter eggs or
[8:29] fan service allows the writers to get really creative with world-building.
[8:33] It doesn't rely on previous media,
[8:35] so it has to create environments that are unique and interesting themselves.
[8:40] I love the introduction to Ferrix where we see
[8:42] this place where the workers all hang their work gloves
[8:45] on the wall outside the building which immediately tells us this is a community.
[8:50] They can hang their stuff up outside because they know no one is going to steal them.
[8:54] That's a setup for the big moment later where the community engages in
[8:57] a collective act of civil disobedience to
[9:00] provide cover for those escaping the authorities.
[9:03] They just put all these clever little twists on things that we're familiar with.
[9:06] Instead of it just being a clock tower,
[9:09] there's a guy who's having the best time of his life,
[9:12] like playing the bell drums.
[9:17] In this scene, a character is tortured.
[9:20] But instead of being tortured in the way we've
[9:22] seen people be tortured in Star Wars before,
[9:24] they invent a completely unique and interesting way of doing a scene like that,
[9:28] which will make a chill run down your spine.
[9:30] There's a three-episode prisoner arc on the show.
[9:33] If the only locations that existed in
[9:35] Star Wars were the ones we see in the movies and shows,
[9:38] then this would be a universe that is like 30 percent prisons.
[9:41] It's like a space America.
[9:43] But instead of just being a prison or instead of
[9:45] sending him to a prison we've seen before,
[9:47] they decide to invent the most sinister and unsettling place imaginable.
[9:53] In this prison, the prisoners aren't allowed to wear shoes.
[9:55] The way they are controlled is through electroshocks from the floor.
[9:59] The guards all have these boots that negate the shock,
[10:02] and this means that it's a prison without bars.
[10:05] But one where you are more policed under penalty of violence than any other.
[10:09] It's a brilliant obstacle for the characters to overcome that I haven't seen done before.
[10:14] There's a quote that has stuck in my mind forever from
[10:15] JJ Abrams about his approach to the Force Awakens,
[10:18] where he says, "I tried to focus on things that I find inspiring about cinema."
[10:22] I ask questions like, "How do we make this movie delightful?
[10:25] That was really the only requirement Larry and I impose on each other.
[10:28] The movie needed to be delightful."
[10:30] The Force Awakens is delightful in a lot of ways,
[10:33] but one of the main ways is because it is indulgent with its nostalgia.
[10:37] But in the seven years since that movie in
[10:39] a media landscape that aches to be as pleasantly nostalgic as the Force Awakens was,
[10:43] what I've realized, is that delightful is torturous, but torturous delightful.
[10:50] How do you know about me?
[10:52] I was hoping for more relaxed conversation,
[10:55] but you're right, we don't have time.
[10:57] I think what Andor does best is tension.
[10:59] Tension inquires the audience to have
[11:01] a clear understanding of the dangers that are present in the story.
[11:04] Think about how many Star Wars scenes you've watched,
[11:06] where the characters are running down a hallway or something,
[11:10] a couple of Storm Troopers appear, they blast them.
[11:12] This is action, but there's not that much tension. They blast them.
[11:15] It's like the action equivalent of a jump scare.
[11:18] Has its uses, but it's easy.
[11:20] They blast them. To paraphrase Alfred Hitchcock,
[11:22] if you have a bomb go off in a scene, sure,
[11:25] that'll surprise the audience for a second. But that's it.
[11:28] But if instead, you tell the audience there is a bomb in the scene,
[11:31] then they're going to anticipate it going off.
[11:33] That's going to create tension for as long as you want.
[11:36] Episode 3 of Andor is a masterclass in this.
[11:39] In this episode, there are exactly 14 goons,
[11:42] no more, no less.
[11:43] We see all of them early on.
[11:45] There are two officers and the rest are subordinates.
[11:47] When they reach Ferrix,
[11:48] two of them stay with Andor's surrogate mother.
[11:50] The rest break into three teams of four and try to
[11:52] converge on the warehouse where they know Andor is.
[11:54] The huge chunk of this episode is just a conversation between two characters.
[11:57] But because we know the Corpos are on their way,
[11:59] the tension escalates with each passing moment.
[12:02] It's a simple technique, but it's done so well here.
[12:05] We also have a clear understanding of who is with who and where everyone is.
[12:08] One team arrests Bix,
[12:09] Andor's friend, so they start moving towards the warehouse.
[12:12] The team with the officers gets delayed,
[12:14] which means we know that in the firefight,
[12:16] Andor's up against four guys from the third team.
[12:19] Because we know all this, we can literally count the kills
[12:21] during this fight and know whether or not they're in danger.
[12:24] One dies in the first explosion then one gets killed by the chains,
[12:30] which is an excellent element of this fight, by the way.
[12:34] It just adds a dynamic to the action that
[12:35] makes it more interesting than a simple shootout.
[12:37] Finally, Luthen shoots a third guy.
[12:41] For a second we think that maybe they're safe, but then, wait no, there were
[12:45] four guys so maybe two of them died in the explosion and we only saw one.
[12:49] Don't go for it, Andor. Bam.
[12:51] Fourth guy starts shooting. The tension is kept throughout the scene.
[12:55] You can apply this to the other arcs in the show as well.
[12:57] The Aldhani heist and the prison escape.
[12:59] They both establish how many bad guys there are.
[13:02] That's why the only keep a 40-man regimen in the Garrison.
[13:04] How many guards on each level?
[13:07] Never more than 12.
[13:09] Then put the characters' intense scenes anticipating
[13:12] the danger and only then does the blasting start.
[13:17] Across the board the craft on display in the show goes really above and beyond,
[13:22] which is notable because the Star Wars TV shows were starting to look a little cheap.
[13:26] Sure, The Mandalorian came out of nowhere and
[13:28] basically invented an entirely new way to do
[13:31] CGI by using this new technology called The Volume rather than using a green screen.
[13:37] They surround the actor with LED screens that project a pre-made digital environment,
[13:41] which is a wonderful piece of technology that
[13:43] is an update on one of the oldest special effects.
[13:47] It never stops being funny to me, though,
[13:49] that they invented all of this because
[13:50] the Mandalorian wears this big, shiny helmet which was
[13:54] reflecting the green from the green screens so they
[13:57] needed to create the actual environment so that the colors were reflecting right.
[14:01] Now this technology is being used on every major production to good and ill effect.
[14:07] Well, every major production except for freaking Andor which
[14:10] built these immaculate real sets which feel extremely grimey and lived in.
[14:14] The Mandalorian looks pretty good but Boba Fett and Obi-Wan were inconsistent.
[14:19] Don't get me wrong, both them look pretty good for television but every once in a while
[14:23] there's an issue like shots where their compositing looks fake,
[14:27] CG characters are never completely convincing either,
[14:30] a problem Andor avoids rather than solves because it has almost no alien characters,
[14:34] really just those two dogs on Ferrix.
[14:36] A bigger issue for me is the choreography of
[14:39] the action scenes like this one with Boba that is very
[14:43] clunky or this speeder bike chase that feels like it's going on
[14:46] forever and that they're all only moving at 10 miles an hour.
[14:49] Worst offender is the forest chase with Leia,
[14:51] where these mercenaries keep failing to catch her because they
[14:54] keep incompetently running into trees and falling down.
[14:57] How are you this bad at this?
[14:59] Just catch her. She's nine years.
[15:00] Generally, I was also just a little disappointed by the depiction of Jabba's Palace and
[15:03] the other locations where the crime bosses hang out in the Boba Fett show.
[15:07] Jabba's Palace in Return of the Jedi was smoke-filled,
[15:09] had tons of weird alien extras and harsh moody lighting.
[15:13] To see it rendered with flat TV lighting is a shame.
[15:16] Sets on Obi-Wan sometimes felt
[15:18] small scale too like this gate crossing scene where Obi-Wan
[15:21] spends all his time frantically shooting this gate
[15:23] open even though there's plenty of room to walk around.
[15:26] The big, dumb fun reason to watch the show was to see Anakin and Obi-Wan fight again.
[15:31] A shame both of their fights are so under-lit
[15:33] it's basically impossible to see what's happening.
[15:35] It's criminal to film this at night.
[15:37] Both scenes get the honorary long night award for worst lighting of the year.
[15:42] Look, a lot of people put a lot of work into
[15:44] these shows to make them look as good as they
[15:46] do and far be it from me to critique the work of
[15:48] thousands of hardworking individuals but please,
[15:50] can one of you just walk across the line and ask the crew of Andor what they're doing
[15:53] different because Andor has been absolutely impeccable.
[15:55] It's not just the reliance on practical effects either,
[15:57] the CG has been just as impressive.
[16:00] Everything just clicks on this show. You know
[16:02] I could forgive all of these shows for these problems if I felt they had
[16:05] the writing to back it up but at the end of the day they're not really about much.
[16:10] Let's talk about the boogie man of the Star Wars fandom, politics.
[16:14] During the release of Obi-Wan the Star Wars franchise made a few headlines
[16:17] by actively pushing back against the toxicity within its own fandom.
[16:20] After the premier episode, actress,
[16:22] Moses Ingram posted a series of Instagram stories
[16:24] sharing some of the racist abuse she received for staring on the show,
[16:28] something that was not a new experience for a person of color appearing in this series.
[16:32] What was new was that Star Wars made an official statement pushing back against it.
[16:36] On May 31st they tweeted,
[16:38] we are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to
[16:39] the Star Wars family and excited for Reva's story to unfold.
[16:43] If anyone intends to make her feel in any way
[16:45] unwelcome we have only one thing to say, we resist.
[16:48] There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy,
[16:52] don't choose to be racist.
[16:54] Around the same time Star Wars also advertised the cover
[16:57] for a newly released comic book, Bounty Hunters 24.
[17:01] The cover featured two lesbian characters in
[17:03] a modified version of the Star Wars logo which included the Pride Flag.
[17:06] Predictably, someone wrote,
[17:08] don't make Star Wars political.
[17:10] A little less predictably though,
[17:12] Star Wars made a solid reply: 1,
[17:15] queer characters existing isn't political;
[17:18] 2, Star Wars is literally our name.
[17:20] Looking at these two moments in isolation we can applaud
[17:23] Star Wars for doing something about the rampant racism and homophobia
[17:27] in their audience, but yes, even though this is
[17:29] a calculated business decision and
[17:30] not evidence that the Disney Corporation possesses a conscience,
[17:33] it's still good that they think that this is the way to handle this.
[17:37] But at the same time,
[17:39] it'd be nice if the movies and TV shows they were making actually back this up.
[17:43] Because in the pre-end toward Disney era,
[17:45] there was a noticeable and exhausting trend of sidestepping any kind of politics at all,
[17:50] with exactly one exception we can't talk about for reasons.
[17:53] Force Awakens thrust viewers into
[17:54] a three-way political conflict where we barely understand two of the factions.
[17:58] Though the we do understand does at least have something to say
[18:01] about the resurgence of Naziism through the radicalization of the youth,
[18:05] that was prescient at the dawn of the Alt-Right when this movie came out in 2015.
[18:10] I challenge anyone though to find
[18:11] a coherent political theme or even idea in Rise of Skywalker.
[18:14] I'll mail you a plaque that reads,
[18:16] "congrats on wasting your finite existence".
[18:18] That movie also spends a third of its runtime ensuring
[18:21] the Chinese sensors that all of its lead characters are indeed straight.
[18:25] Pretty funny for them to say this weird and hypocritical times we live in.
[18:29] The Han Solo movie has a pretty fun ramp,
[18:31] but it also has a droid character whose desire for liberation is mocked as annoying.
[18:35] She's a woke robot activist.
[18:37] Ha ha ha, it's lazy.
[18:39] Bad. I'm not a huge fan of [inaudible] ,
[18:41] but at least it can hang its hat on themes of
[18:43] self-sacrifice for a cause and inspiring hope.
[18:46] Then came the TV shows,
[18:47] which have mostly been ciphers.
[18:48] The political state of the galaxy is a distant backdrop in these shows,
[18:52] and making any kind of statement beyond fascism bad is pretty much unthinkable.
[18:57] The Mandalorian takes place during a time when democracy is rebuilding itself,
[19:01] but the new republic is only a minor presence in the story.
[19:03] The one interesting moment Obi-Wan had in
[19:06] this respect is when he and Leia get picked up by
[19:08] a truck driver and it turns out he's a mega Republican, a MAGAlien.
[19:14] The scene is a fun little observation on the mundanity of evil,
[19:17] but it's pretty isolated from the rest of the show.
[19:19] There's definite sense in the Disney era thus far that they want to
[19:22] cut the sharp edges off of the Star Wars franchise.
[19:25] They want it to be easily marketable and inoffensive.
[19:27] That's the priority.
[19:29] Political themes will always alienate some portion of the audience.
[19:31] They occasionally let one of their projects go this route,
[19:34] but it's measured so that it doesn't overtake the image of the brand.
[19:37] This is all pretty strange given that this is, you know, Star Wars.
[19:42] This all comes from movies that came out just a few years after the Vietnam War ended,
[19:45] and had the audacity and balls to make
[19:48] the colonial imperial genocidal power that conquers the world
[19:51] with the use of stormtroopers being manned entirely by people with British accents,
[19:55] while the rebels use guerrilla tactics and fight in the jungle.
[19:58] George Lucas, the original Chad,
[20:00] has flat out said that he works at the Viet Cong.
[20:02] You did something very interesting with Star Wars, if you think about it.
[20:06] The good guys are the rebels.
[20:07] They're using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized empire.
[20:12] I think we call those guys terrorists today.
[20:14] We call them Mujahideen.
[20:16] We call them Al-Qaeda.
[20:17] When I did it, they were Viet Cong.
[20:19] Exactly. Were you thinking of that at the time?
[20:22] Yes.
[20:23] His prequel trilogy, which I can't believe I have to come out on here,
[20:26] the Internet, and talk about positively,
[20:28] were about how democracies are infiltrated by demagogues.
[20:31] How the anxieties of young men who are confused about
[20:33] their place in the world can be manipulated by lying, powerful,
[20:36] hungry ghouls who want to use them to tear down
[20:38] institutions and ended it with the hero turning into a villain
[20:41] by quoting one of the most famous lines from one of
[20:43] the most famous speeches of the sitting president of
[20:46] the United States at the time shortly after 9/11.
[20:48] If you're not with me,
[20:51] then you're my enemy.
[20:53] Either you're with us or you're with the terrorists.
[21:10] But when I say a story is political,
[21:13] I definitely mean it in a different way than the bozos
[21:16] that whine about their favorite franchises having gay people in them.
[21:19] What I mean by it is a story that has something to say about the moment we're in,
[21:22] and that says it with every tool of storytelling at its disposal.
[21:25] But even stories that don't have that much disabled social systems are
[21:28] not completely bereft of some political message.
[21:31] Look at the Mandalorian,
[21:32] 95 percent of that show is Mando hugging Grogu.
[21:35] I'd say that fatherhood is it central theme,
[21:37] but that's not, not political.
[21:39] Fatherhood is necessarily a statement about gender roles.
[21:41] It just doesn't feel,
[21:43] "political" to most audiences,
[21:45] because it more or less abides by the dominant ideology.
[21:49] Listen, I know Baby Yoda is cute,
[21:51] but you have to pay attention to what I'm saying.
[21:53] You can't get distracted by it.
[21:55] What's really at issue for me isn't the presence of something political,
[21:58] but whether what's being looked at is actually controversial and interesting.
[22:02] Whether it has the courage to explore topics where there is push-back.
[22:06] That's what I feel these other shows are hesitant to do,
[22:08] but which Andor embraces fully.
[22:10] Yeah, I know Clone Wars exists too.
[22:12] I did watch all of it recently though,
[22:14] and I am going to make a video about it that will be exclusive on Patreon.
[22:17] If you want to hear all my extremely pedantic thoughts about that,
[22:20] you can pledge at a five-dollar tier.
[22:22] There are some other things going on at the Patreon too.
[22:24] You can watch the final cut of my big one-hour foundation video,
[22:27] which is the true conclusion to my I, Robot video.
[22:30] Personally, I think it's my best work.
[22:31] I also recently made a little ramble about The Batman.
[22:34] I had some thoughts about the editing.
[22:36] That's going to stay a Patreon and exclusive though,
[22:38] and I am going to be making more regular exclusive content like that for Patreon,
[22:42] so that the only way to get all of my delicious little thoughts about
[22:45] the world is to go and support me on patreon.com/justright.
[22:48] But seriously though, this video is about to get into
[22:51] some topics that we'll probably get this video demonetized.
[22:54] If you're a fan of my general ability to survive on the Internet,
[22:57] or survive in general,
[22:58] now would be a good time to join.
[22:59] So fascist. Andor is
[23:08] the most overtly political piece of Star Wars media ever.
[23:11] The commentary bleeds into just about every aspect of the show.
[23:15] Literally from the first sequence where
[23:18] our Latino protagonist is hassled by some rental cops over his papers.
[23:22] Broadly speaking, the show is anti-imperialism and anti-fascism,
[23:26] but the backdrop of each of its arcs interrogates
[23:28] one of the pillars of how those systems operate.
[23:32] Capitalism, colonialism and the prison labor system.
[23:35] In the first arc, Andor is getting hunted down by the corporate police,
[23:39] but which see themselves as an arm of imperial authority.
[23:42] Culprit tactical forces are the empire's first-line of defense.
[23:46] This is such an interesting decision because we're used to
[23:49] the goons in a Star Wars story being stormtroopers,
[23:53] soldiers for an obviously evil empire that explicitly resembles the Nazis.
[23:58] This means the audience has no problem with
[24:01] seeing them killed in droves by the good guys.
[24:03] We're not meant to see Luke Skywalker as committing
[24:06] an immoral act when he blows up the Death Star and murders a gazillion space Nazis,
[24:11] because their space Nazis.
[24:13] In making Andor's opponent in this arc, police officers,
[24:16] the mobility of the violence is made grayer to a degree.
[24:19] It transfers our antipathy towards the empire onto representatives of capitalism,
[24:25] equating them as at least in this case,
[24:27] being in service of the same injustice.
[24:30] That is a bold political statement to be making when the
[24:32] [inaudible] the police movement is very present.
[24:35] Fascism has no coherent or consistent economic principles.
[24:39] It aligns itself with whatever forces it needs to to retain power and thus,
[24:43] it has a long and convoluted history with capitalism.
[24:46] But what I think is being touched on here is the tendency of
[24:48] capitalists to support fascist regimes.
[24:51] In Italy, in 1922,
[24:53] it was the strength of trade unions and socialist
[24:56] agitation which terrified the upper and middle classes.
[24:59] They feared a revolution would disrupt their position in the social hierarchy,
[25:03] which is what led to the king empowering
[25:04] the fascist movement and putting Mussolini into power.
[25:07] Fascist governments also tend to privatized
[25:09] state-owned enterprises in order to entice the support of the wealthy.
[25:14] Mussolini, for instance, privatized life insurance,
[25:16] among a lot of other stuff.
[25:18] I start with touches on some of this across the animated series and in the prequels
[25:21] as Emperor Palpatine brings various corporations under his control,
[25:25] like the banking clan.
[25:26] But just because corporations might support a fascist regime,
[25:29] the irony is that that does not guarantee their safety or
[25:33] autonomy within it as they can be nationalized whenever it suits the government.
[25:37] In Andor, the Preox-Morlana
[25:38] corporate authority has autonomy from the empire.
[25:41] But as soon as they screw up,
[25:43] the empire comes in and puts them under direct imperial control.
[25:47] You've rang the final bell on corporate independence.
[25:49] As of this morning,
[25:51] the Morlana system is under permanent imperial authority.
[25:55] This arc also includes flashbacks to Andor's childhood on a planet called Kenari,
[26:01] which was the location of Republic corporate mining operations and where
[26:05] an industrial disaster during the imperial era
[26:08] led to it becoming a toxic planet and abandoned.
[26:11] The politics of this arc has undertones of anti-capitalism that are so strong.
[26:15] There just tones.
[26:18] The second arc is set on a planet suffering under imperial colonization.
[26:22] We learned that there used to be thousands of settlements,
[26:25] but that then the Empire came along and forcefully relocated everyone
[26:29] into cities where the people could be put to work for the empire.
[26:33] $40,000 Aldhanis all across the highlands,
[26:37] they were here for centuries.
[26:40] But it only took the empire a decade to clear them out.
[26:43] Kill them.
[26:45] No, drove them South.
[26:48] As an enterprise zone in the lowlands.
[26:51] We're shown repeatedly that the empire has no respect for the cultures it suppresses.
[26:56] The Aldhani have a sacred temple on the river here that
[26:59] the imperial troopers use as target practice.
[27:02] Target practice?
[27:04] That temple was on a river that the Aldhani considered sacred,
[27:08] but which the empire dammed up so that they could use the caves for storage.
[27:12] The leader of the garrison,
[27:14] a guy perfectly named Jayhold.
[27:16] If you ever make a con line for Aldhani,
[27:17] I hope the word for douche bag is Jayhold.
[27:20] Mr. Jayhold constantly expresses his racist disdain for the local population,
[27:24] deeming them lesser people who are simple-minded and who smell bad.
[27:27] The Dhanis, they're a simple people.
[27:30] They breed a sad combination of traits that
[27:33] make them particularly vulnerable to manipulation.
[27:36] We tried goat hides for a three-year lease,
[27:39] so it didn't smell so badly, it might be amusing Come on
[27:41] [inaudible] The Dhanis have a rough appetite for fragrance.
[27:45] Yes, I've been bored.
[27:46] He's not the only one.
[27:48] How many did you think we'll have tomorrow?
[27:50] I don't know. It was less than 100 last time.
[27:54] Still enough to smell them, right?
[27:57] The tactics Mr. Jay hold
[27:59] here uses to control the Dhani population,
[28:02] relying more on soft power than they do outright force.
[28:05] For instance, he wants the smallest number of them to come to
[28:09] the ceremony where they observe this astronomical phenomenon known as The Eye.
[28:13] A ceremony that holds cultural and religious value to them.
[28:17] We offer them transport because we know they will refuse,
[28:19] but that along the way we've placed a series of comfort units.
[28:23] Shelters and taverns with cheap local beverages.
[28:27] Quite predictably, what began as 500 pilgrims at the bottom
[28:32] has already dwindled down to, where are now, lieutenant?
[28:35] We counted 60 last night, sir.
[28:37] It's a plot point that is deliberately evocative of the long history of
[28:42] European colonizers using alcohol to
[28:45] their advantage when negotiating and trading with Native Americans.
[28:49] Between this, the use of relocation and
[28:51] the destruction and degradation of significant religious locations,
[28:54] what this arc of the show depicts is the definition of cultural genocide.
[28:58] We never see an act of
[28:59] explicit on-screen violence committed by the empire against the Aldhani,
[29:02] but the threat of violence and the policies they imposed are meant to destroy
[29:06] Aldhani culture so that the remnants of
[29:08] their society are malleable to the project of imperialism.
[29:11] This is part of what makes the ending of this arc so cathartic.
[29:15] The heroes use the ceremony around the eye as their means of sneaking into
[29:19] the garrison and then they use the media shower itself to cover their escape.
[29:23] Effectively using something of cultural importance to the Aldhani as
[29:28] the means by which they achieve victory over the empire and symbolically liberation.
[29:33] This sequence is glorious, and that is,
[29:36] I believe the intended message of the sequence,
[29:38] because in the very next episode, this scene happens.
[29:41] The use of any local custom, festival,
[29:44] or tradition as cover
[29:46] the rebel activity will trigger permanent revocation of imperial tolerance.
[29:54] This show was made by the Disney Corporation,
[29:57] a show about the tactics of cultural genocide.
[30:00] The Disney Corporation.
[30:02] You're watching Disney Channel.
[30:04] What I find brilliant about this show is that it
[30:07] managed to do a few other prequels are capable of doing.
[30:10] It takes a story where we as the audience already know how things will end.
[30:13] We know that Andor will become a rebel and
[30:15] that he will die to help destroy the Death Star,
[30:17] which will eventually lead to the fall of the Galactic Empire.
[30:19] Which means that in this show,
[30:21] the opponent is an entity that cannot be defeated.
[30:24] Which means the stakes of the story can never be will Andor
[30:27] defeat the empire because we already know what the answer is there.
[30:31] Instead, the story has to completely invest in the more subtle ideas of
[30:35] how does a person become a rebel and what is the cost of fighting a rebellion?
[30:41] I think those two questions are at the heart of the show,
[30:44] and unlike every other piece of Star Wars media,
[30:47] it takes a lot of time and struggle to answer those questions.
[30:51] Usually in a Star Wars story,
[30:52] becoming a rebel part is pretty straightforward.
[30:56] Oh, your aunt and uncle got burning naked in the barn.
[30:58] Well, sucks to be you kiddo.
[31:00] Here's a blaster. Even with characters like Han and Finn,
[31:04] who take a little more to come around to the cause,
[31:07] it's usually a pretty simple reason.
[31:09] My friends are rebels and I like my friends.
[31:12] With Andor, his entire story in this first season
[31:15] has to be about his gradual radicalization to the side of the rebellion.
[31:18] A path that is not straight or simple,
[31:21] which is what makes it feel much more real, grounded,
[31:23] effective, visceral, and other good words.
[31:26] In its first three episode arc,
[31:28] Andor is on the edge of poverty at all times and lives just outside the law.
[31:33] He has anti-imperial sentiment.
[31:35] They're so fat and satisfied.
[31:37] They can't imagine it.
[31:39] They can't imagine what?
[31:41] That someone like me would ever get inside their house.
[31:44] But his outlets to channel that rage are limited.
[31:46] He works as a thief and takes advantage of the hubris
[31:49] of the empire so that he can get by financially.
[31:51] But being anti-empire does not necessarily make someone pro-revolution.
[31:55] Luthen can train him to use guerrilla tactics.
[31:58] Never carry anything you don't control.
[32:00] But that doesn't mean Andor believes in the fight.
[32:02] His lack of commitment is what comes under
[32:04] the microscope in the second arc of the series.
[32:06] I think it's all useless.
[32:08] Better to spit in their food and steal they drinks.
[32:11] It's better to live. Better to eat,
[32:15] sleep, do what you want. You don't know me.
[32:18] Here, he joins a small band of rebels who are
[32:20] planning a heist that will help fund the rebellion.
[32:23] The minute Andor arrives,
[32:24] he comes under suspicion from most of the rebels who do not trust him.
[32:28] They shouldn't trust him.
[32:30] These episodes contrast him with two other characters, Nemik and Skeen.
[32:35] Nemik, who of course fills the obligatory rebel role of little dude with weird hat and
[32:39] some ideas about stuff is selfless and a true believer in the cause.
[32:44] Nemik's a surprise.
[32:46] He's green, but he's all in, he's a true believer.
[32:48] Meanwhile, Skeen is just out for himself and doesn't care about the revolution.
[32:52] Another rebellion for you.
[32:54] I'm a rebel, it's just me against everybody else?
[33:01] During this arc, Andor is smacked dab in the middle of them, Andor between them.
[33:05] My man Nemik has a manifesto you see and
[33:08] takes every opportunity to educate the rebels around him.
[33:10] They can all see the injustices of the empire,
[33:12] but it's Nemik who's documenting it and analyzing their tactics.
[33:16] We've been relying on imperial tech and we've made ourselves vulnerable.
[33:19] It's a growing list of things we've known and forgotten things they pushed
[33:22] us to forget, things like freedom.
[33:25] It's so confusing, isn't it?
[33:26] So much going wrong, so much to say and all of it happening so quickly.
[33:29] The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to
[33:31] understand it and that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine.
[33:34] It's easier to hide behind faulty atrocities than a single incident.
[33:38] This scene is so cool.
[33:41] There's a moment here where Nemik equates his manifesto
[33:44] with the navigational tool he and Andor are talking about earlier.
[33:47] Fresh inspiration, now two seemingly random objects and yet this charts an astral path,
[33:51] this maps the trail a political consciousness.
[33:53] Both systems based on truth,
[33:54] both navigating to clear and achievable outcomes.
[33:56] In other words, you can't just win a rebellion with physical tools,
[34:00] tools like the ones that Andor used to steal and/or sell.
[34:03] You need some way to interpret the miasma
[34:06] of events caused in the wake of a fascist regime coming to power.
[34:09] A means to understand how they take power and keep it.
[34:12] Because that understanding is truly what would keep the rebels
[34:15] committed to their cause and capable of changing the system.
[34:18] But Andor isn't ready to listen.
[34:20] As in the first arc,
[34:22] Andor only knows he doesn't like the empire.
[34:25] I like to hear what Clem believes.
[34:29] I know what I'm against.
[34:31] But it's an untempered feeling.
[34:33] He's not truly committed.
[34:34] There's a great way this is visually communicated.
[34:37] The scene starts with Nemik walking into camp with milk and
[34:40] the camera intentionally begins the scene with it in the center of frame,
[34:44] subtly telling us to pay attention to the milk.
[34:46] Pay attention to the milk, boys.
[34:47] At the start of the scene, Nemik pours Andor a drink.
[34:49] At the end, this happens.
[34:51] Busy day, come finish your milk.
[34:56] Andor isn't ready to listen to Nemik so he doesn't
[35:00] drink the milk that Nemik gave him. Nice touches
[35:03] abound in this series.
[35:04] Here's another, Andor uses a different name in
[35:06] each arc and in this one he goes by his adopted father's name,
[35:10] Clem, who we learned was executed by the Empire.
[35:13] We see a flashback of this later where Clem was trying
[35:16] to stop people from protesting the empire.
[35:18] But because of some bad timing,
[35:20] they assume that he was the one that was rebelling and that's why he dies.
[35:24] Andor, going by the name Clem here tells us
[35:26] that he is learning the lesson of his father,
[35:28] which is bluntly, don't rebel.
[35:31] Contrasted with Nemik is that other guy in the scene whose name is Skeen,
[35:35] which makes this a Skeen scene.
[35:37] Skeen is extremely skeptical of everyone else's motivations because
[35:41] his biggest worry is that everyone is as selfish and immoral as he is.
[35:45] Nemik is an optimist,
[35:46] an idealist who sees the best in everyone. Andor shows up out of nowhere and Nemik is
[35:51] the only person who for no apparent reason
[35:52] completely trusts that Andor is a rebel at heart.
[35:56] He's committed. I'm feeling that. I want to.
[36:00] Feel what?
[36:01] His belief in the cause.
[36:04] When it comes down to it. That's all I need to know.
[36:06] That's his blind spot.
[36:08] This is a character that's introduced to us sleeping on the job.
[36:11] He's got a great handle on the politics of the rebellion,
[36:14] but not on the people.
[36:15] He's too trusting, then there's Skeen who suspects the worst of everyone.
[36:18] Fall asleep on watch, they're going to put your head on a pike for a laugh.
[36:22] Sorry.
[36:22] At the end of the arc Skeen makes a pitch to
[36:24] Andor, they've just gotten away with the money they were
[36:26] stealing and they have this chance to betray
[36:28] the two surviving rebels, take the ship, split the winnings.
[36:32] Skeen feels that he can convince Andor of this because they
[36:35] have the same suspicions about other people,
[36:37] because they both grew up impoverished.
[36:39] You're not here to save anybody, but yourself.
[36:43] I saw the first minute you came into camp, you're just like me,
[36:47] we are born in the hole and all we know is climbing over somebody else to get out.
[36:50] Andor shoots him immediately.
[36:52] Which isn't just him killing a bad guy,
[36:54] but rejecting that part of his own personality,
[36:57] his fear that everyone will betray him.
[36:59] Because the stuff that's Skeen was saying is the same stuff that we'd
[37:02] expect from Andor earlier in the show.
[37:05] But at the same time that this happens,
[37:06] Nemik dies from wounds.
[37:08] He took on the mission and wills his manifesto to Andor.
[37:11] Andor becomes less motivated by selfishness,
[37:13] but in that same moment he also loses
[37:16] the direct revolutionary figure in Nemik
[37:18] who is pushing him towards genuine radicalization.
[37:21] He has the tools to get there himself in the form of the manifesto.
[37:25] But not the will.
[37:26] Which brings us to the third arc.
[37:28] Fascism is a prison. Look at that,
[37:31] a new shot. The next batch of episodes are the best of the bunch, best of the year.
[37:35] Can't say enough good about them.
[37:36] Because in addition to having one of the most interesting locations and
[37:39] compelling supporting characters in any piece of Star Wars media ever.
[37:42] This is where the questions of how does someone become
[37:44] a rebel and what does it cost come to full fruition.
[37:47] At the start of the arc, I think audiences are
[37:49] probably a little surprised by where we find Andor.
[37:52] I definitely thought that the next episode would
[37:54] open with him reading next book and it'd be like,
[37:57] "Okay, he has a revolutionary mindset now,"
[37:59] instead we see and are going in the complete opposite direction. After
[38:03] the nearly botched Aldhani heist where almost everyone on the team died,
[38:07] he pretty reasonably wants nothing to do with the war.
[38:10] A lot of movies and TV shows tried to pull off a beat in
[38:12] the story known as the Refusal of The Call,
[38:14] because that's what Joseph Campbell told them to do.
[38:16] But it can often feel like just ticking a box off of a list.
[38:19] Like we need the character to say no to the adventure for
[38:21] 0.5 seconds because that will make them more relatable.
[38:23] But these stories aren't really interested in the psychology of reluctance.
[38:27] But in the story where the main arc is about radicalization,
[38:30] about a man gaining political consciousness.
[38:32] It's reluctance and apathy and fear that are the central obstacles.
[38:37] Andor is given so many chances to be part of the rebellion but keeps refusing them.
[38:40] The story has to keep hammering at his reasons for saying no,
[38:44] because reluctance is the impulse to just go along,
[38:47] to get along to not stick your neck out, to play it safe,
[38:50] because we don't want to lose anything.
[38:51] We don't want to risk anything. Andor doesn't, it's fear.
[38:55] He's finally got the resources he needs to liberate himself from the cycles of
[38:58] poverty that he was stuck in and to escape the eye of the empire.
[39:02] He wants to bring the handful of people he loves with
[39:04] him and live out a quiet and peaceful life.
[39:06] Just like he said at the beginning of the second arc.
[39:08] It's better to live. Better to eat,
[39:12] sleep, do what you want.
[39:14] The point of these episodes is to say,
[39:16] no, you can't do that.
[39:18] You can't just free yourself from your own chains.
[39:20] You've got a free everybody from their chains as well.
[39:23] Because so long as one person is oppressed,
[39:25] we are all oppressed.
[39:26] The fight doesn't stop until the system of oppression is torn down and replaced,
[39:30] really channeling my inner Nemik today. Throughout the show, Andor's
[39:34] most consistent observation about
[39:36] the empire is that their comfort is what makes them weak.
[39:39] He says some form of it in every arc.
[39:42] They're so fat and satisfied.
[39:44] They can't imagine it.
[39:46] Can't imagine what?
[39:48] That someone like me would ever get inside their house.
[39:51] Well, you have right? The empire doesn't play by the rules.
[39:55] How am I wrong?
[40:01] They don't care enough to learn.
[40:04] You think they're listening. You think they care enough to make an effort.
[40:09] Like you would know.
[40:11] I know this, they don't need to care.
[40:14] All they need to do is turn this floor on twice a day and keep their numbers rolling.
[40:18] His observations are apt,
[40:20] but there's also an element of projection to
[40:22] them because if Andor was a member of the empire,
[40:25] that's how he would act.
[40:27] If he was comfortable, he wouldn't worry about the details.
[40:29] Comfort is what he wants,
[40:31] but the empire won't let him have it.
[40:33] Andor was trying to enjoy his life when,
[40:35] for basically no reason at all,
[40:36] he gets abducted by the state and thrown into a prison
[40:38] where he is forced to do manual labor for the empire.
[40:41] Suddenly the tables are turned in this series because up until this point it has been
[40:46] other characters who have been trying to radicalize
[40:48] Andor so that he will help them pull off the rebellion.
[40:51] Luthen has tried to give him the tools and
[40:53] the gorilla strategies that he needs to physically fight the empire.
[40:56] Nemik has tried to instill in him a political consciousness so
[41:00] that he can intellectually parse the oppressive tactics of the empire.
[41:03] But up until this point, both have failed,
[41:05] but nothing will radicalize someone faster than when they are put into
[41:08] a position where they need to convince someone else to join them.
[41:11] In the imperial prison, Andor is put under the control of Kino;
[41:14] another prisoner who is in charge of one of the rooms where
[41:17] the prisoners are making something rather.
[41:20] In the first episode here, Kino feels like a character we've met a million times before;
[41:24] the hard-ass prison/military guy who yells orders at the hero and we
[41:29] assume that he's going to be the main obstacle
[41:32] for Andor to overcome in order to escape the prison.
[41:35] But when I say obstacle,
[41:36] you think Kino is going to be the guy they're going to have to
[41:39] distract or sneak around while they pull off the plan,
[41:43] instead, Kino is the obstacle in the sense that
[41:45] Andor has to convince him to join the escape attempt.
[41:48] He has to convince Kino to rebel.
[41:51] There's a whole episode where Andor is just
[41:53] relentlessly trying to turn Kino's mind toward resistance,
[41:57] but Kino won't have it.
[41:58] You want out of here alive,
[41:59] turn that part of your mind off.
[42:02] Kino just wants to keep his head down,
[42:03] serve out the remainder of his sentence and leave.
[42:06] But then he finds out that there is no escaping from the prison.
[42:09] That once his sentence is up,
[42:11] they're just going to transfer him to
[42:12] a different prison and keep shuffling him around until he's dead.
[42:16] He is confronted with the knowledge that he is going to die
[42:19] in this prison and that's what convinces him to step up.
[42:23] How many guards on each level?
[42:26] Never more than 12.
[42:29] This setting is so potent.
[42:32] It's constructed as a metaphor for all life under a totalitarian regime
[42:37] because the defining quality of that kind of regime is that everywhere becomes a prison.
[42:41] Your body is under constant surveillance and control,
[42:44] your labor is coerced,
[42:46] you are physically punished for disobedience,
[42:48] and there's no escape because wherever you go is just another part of the prison,
[42:52] a labyrinth of oppression designed to keep you in chains.
[42:56] Knowing that, the only option becomes to resist,
[43:00] even if it means you won't survive the effort because like Kino says,
[43:03] there is only one way out.
[43:06] Kino knows he probably won't survive.
[43:08] But I'm going to assume I'm already dead.
[43:11] I think he's aware that the prison is surrounded by
[43:13] water and that even if he manages to coordinate a prison break,
[43:17] he might be able to free everyone else,
[43:19] but he will probably drown or be recaptured and executed.
[43:22] He does all of this with that in the back of his mind because he's doing in
[43:26] real-time what Luthen is describing in another part of this episode,
[43:30] that he has been forced to sacrifice everything to fight the empire,
[43:34] even though he knows he won't be able to enjoy the post empire period.
[43:38] I burned my decency for someone else's future.
[43:41] I burned my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see.
[43:45] Everyone is Moses in this episode;
[43:48] leading others to a promised land they cannot enjoy themselves.
[43:51] That's what rebelling costs and why we're also afraid to be the one that stands up.
[43:54] It's why the story has to be about Andor becoming a rebel,
[43:57] even though he explicitly and repeatedly shows that he does not want to be part of it.
[44:02] Because the people doing this work aren't going to see the fruits of this labor,
[44:06] they have to do it for the singular reason that it is immoral to do nothing.
[44:10] He knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel,
[44:15] and when the day comes and those two pull together,
[44:18] he will be an unstoppable force for good.
[44:21] This show takes the process of radicalization seriously and every part of it is
[44:25] a nuanced argument for the necessity of revolution when faced with authoritarianism,
[44:30] and/or totalitarianism, and/or fascism.
[44:33] That's just Andor's arc on this show.
[44:35] There are also plot lines exploring
[44:37] the factional infighting that revolutions must overcome to build a cohesive movement,
[44:42] help those within the political elite or needed to coordinate resistance efforts,
[44:46] the intricacies of a fascist bureaucracy,
[44:49] and a pair of queer characters who have an actual real relationship instead of
[44:53] something that can be excised for China
[44:55] in less time it takes me to write my YouTube titles.
[44:58] Rarely have I seen a piece of pop culture that is such a thorough critique of
[45:01] so many different interlocking systems of control in such an efficient and measured way.
[45:07] I never expected the Star Wars franchise to be
[45:08] capable of doing something like this again.
[45:10] Andor was a show that I had zero excitement for going into its premiere,
[45:13] but it has surprised me at every turn.
[45:15] It's not just good for its franchise or its genre,
[45:18] but some of the best TV this year.
[45:22] Thanks for watching everybody and a big thank you to
[45:25] my patrons for supporting me on Patreon,
[45:28] including Mike Moss and dogbestdog.
[45:30] If you want to support the show and get your name in the credits,
[45:32] just go to patreon.com/justright.
[45:35] Also, I just want to acknowledge everyone who came in after the I, Robot video.
[45:39] We doubled the Patreon,
[45:41] so thank you for that. Keep writing everyone.
[46:23] It's not just fun and/or political,
[46:26] it's not one or the other,
[46:28] it's both and;
[46:31] the other guys that helped destroy a Death Star, the Bothans.
[46:38] Many Bothans died to bring us this information.