Star Wars Andor S1E3: "Reckoning" (continued more)

Okay, so one issue I *am* going to take with this continuing action sequence is its overuse of the shakycam. It works to emphasize the poor visibility and unstable environment during the firefight in the collapsing warehouse, but then the fight goes outside and starts cutting to other soldiers who are just running down the street and stuff, and the shaking continues, and it feels like I'm back in a mid 2000's movie theater wondering why I even go to these anymore.

That is a solitary issue, though. And it's easy to ignore in light of all the other great stuff going on.

At absolutely no stage, any time in the battle, is anyone allowed to look dignified. The inherent lameness of these mostly unremarkable-looking, mostly middle-aged men as they alternate between standing around waiting for things to happen and stumbling blindly through dust clouds and debris is persistent, and it hangs over the good guys almost as heavily as it does Douche Force.

They're still arguing about whether or not to dive back into the rubble for the comm relay when the guy on the scaffolding behind them starts shooting. And misses. And then they both go scrambling for cover like alley cats that have just been startled out from behind a dumpster.​

Between the explosions, shooting, and building collapse, three out of the twelve men Linus and Douchenozzle brought have been killed or disabled. The others take a painfully long while to close in on the targets. Their fireteams aren't the best coordinated, and the ongoing din of clanging metal from all around isn't helping them.

A memorable moment is when the lead group, including both Douchenozzle and Linus, finds itself just standing there guarding a nearby thoroughfair waiting for updates from the other fireteams until Douchenozzle loses his shit and goes "ARE WE JUST GOING TO STAND HERE?" And Linus kinda thinks for a moment before literally going "yeah, good point" and splitting their group to take more aggressive positioning.

The undignified boredom of standing around waiting, punctuated by the even-less-dignified tripping over themselves and firing blindly into smoke clouds. I've never been in combat, but this is accurate to the biographical accounts I've read of what it's like. Especially urban combat in hostile conditions like this situation entails.

Then, when they do split up and take more aggressive positions, Douchenozzle himself realizes that he isn't sure where he should be repositioning to. So he ends up sheepishly withdrawing to Cassa's house to help the one guy they left behind guarding Mom and Cuckcube. On one hand, reinforcing the lone soldier they left at the perp's house now that they know said perp is engaged and has a heavily armed helper is actually a good idea. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that this isn't the product of tactical reasoning, but simply of not knowing what else to do, so I can't really give him credit for it lol.

Another incident that unfolds amid the confusion is the capture of Bix. In the moments before Harry's bombs went off, one of the fireteams grabbed her off the street for running suspiciously fast and purposefully toward the location they'd traced Cassa to.

When the situation goes hot and people get pulled into new positions, the group interrogating Bix is worn thin. The last couple of guys hurriedly decide to just handcuff her to a wall to free themselves up for battle. Only, while they're doing that, Tim - who had been trying to catch up to Bix to stop her from putting herself in danger, not that I think he'd have any way of stopping her or even getting her to give him the time of day anymore - comes within sight.

Predictably, he freaks out when he sees Bix being restrained and manhandled as a direct result of his own actions. And, also predictably, the sheer force of his life crashing down all around him dazes Tim too badly for him to hear the guards shouting "stay back!" as he runs toward her

Rip in pieces, jackass.

It sucks for Bix, who had to watch this happen from just down the street while she's helplessly chained to a wall. Seeing her boyfriend killed in front of her, even if he most likely already wasn't her boyfriend anymore as of this morning, deals a visible emotional blow. Also, she's still just left alone there chained in place staring at the body while the soldiers all run off to help their buddies, so that sucks for her even more. Hopefully some of the locals will come and cut her free soon, since she's unguarded; the locals are hostile enough to the corporate authorities to do that, Bix herself seems at least fairly well-liked by the community, and metal-cutting tools do in fact grow on trees in this neighbourhood.

The manhunt (really more like a manwait, since they lost the targets and are just standing around in flanking positions hoping they haven't already slipped through) scene ends up revolving around the centerpiece of Douchenozzle at Cassa's house, listening to Mom speak as he peers out the window hoping that this is making him useful and the other trooper keeps her and Cuckcube at gunpoint. She seems confident that the man isn't going to shoot no matter what she says (or perhaps, has simply resigned herself to probably not living through this day), so she speaks, and Douchenozzles demands for her to be silent are ignored.

She speaks calmly, quietly, and just a little bit smugly about the din of the banging metal coming from all around them. About how these are the bells that chime in something new. That this is what a reckoning sounds like, but what they really should be worried about is what happens when they hear it stop. I'm *pretty sure* this is a bluff on her part, but as Douchenozzle and the other (very young) soldier left here are pretty clearly inexperienced with field operations it successfully rattles them. My best guess is that she's trying to get them to the point where Cassa and Cuckcube can easily take them out if the latter does end up sneaking back over to here.

During her ominous little speech, a visual montage focuses on some interesting things. The one that stuck in my mind the most is this long shot, of a pair of soldiers trying to drown out the din as they seek ambush spots in the shadow of the anvil-mosque.

I snarked a little about the bizarro-adhan ritual these people have, but this shot makes that worldbuilding choice much less of a cheeky quirk and much more of a political statement. The architecture of the structure, now that we see it in full, is very clearly a kind of psychedelic space-middle-eastern. Even the camera angle makes the anvil visible through the minaret window turn the patch of sky behind it into a crescent shape, evocative of the Islamic moon emblem.

The private police and company town aspects of Andor's setting are obviously drawing on the experiences of western internal colonies. The pseudo-Muslim aesthetics, though, combined with the corporate henchmen coming by aircraft from far away and the scavenging through the hulks of enemy vehicles for salvageable parts, draws much more from the War on Terror.

The point being made, I think, is that conflict between the imperial core's domestic underclass and militarized corporate-backed police, and the conflict between the periphery and the corporate-backed core, are the same conflict. See it as colonialism rebounding back on the heartland, or as the heartland's native oppression reaching out with military backing. Either way, it's the same institutions captured by the same elites using the same iron fist for the same ego and/or profit motives.

Another memorable little bit of this montage shows Linus pulling out his hip-flask when he thinks no one is looking.

You could generously assume that he's taking some kind of combat drugs here, but I don't think that's the intended implication. Pretty sure he actually is just drinking on the job to cope with the stress. After all that bluster about themselves being a true, professional military no matter what it says in the paperwork.

This - and really, Linus' overall behavior in this sequence - significantly lowers the likelihood that Linus was secretly trying to sabotage Douchenozzle. It now seems that the dude is actually just that much of a goddamned mess, the sabotage was unintentional, and he and Douchenozzle simply reinforced each other's delusions in a positive feedback loop of deranged incompetence.

Also, we soon find out what Mom's angle was when she told Douchenozzle that he really needs to panic when the metal clanging stops. When the clanging does eventually stop a few minutes later, seemingly by a loose public consensus that if they haven't saved anyone by this point they probably aren't going to, Douchenozzle and the green mook with him both freak the fuck out and go running outside in preparation for whatever's about to happen. Which results in them being out of position and out in the open when Cassa and Harry do come back this way.

Douchenozzle owes Cassa his life. Harry wanted to just kill the flat-footed prick. Cassa was the one who opted to hold him at gunpoint and get information about the enemy's numbers and positions, and then to also not break his word and kill him in cold blood after they'd gotten him to talk.

Or maybe they were just playing good cop/bad cop, that's also possible. We know from the pilot that Cassa likes to give enemies a chance to not make him kill them when possible, and we know that Harry is jaded to the point of "set off bombs first, ask questions never," so this exchange could just as easily be genuine as performative.

Well, if there really was any disagreement between them, Cassa's side is reprieved. Douchenozzle is not only too much of a coward to lie to them, but also serves to sew further disarray among the enemies when they hear him moaning for help from behind his gag from the darkness inside the building Cassa and Harry left him in and have to run in and investigate.

Meanwhile, another soldier runs back to their shuttle to provide air support. I feel like they probably should have had someone stay aboard and do that in the first place lol. It turns out they apparently didn't even have any SECURITY CAMERAS running around their ship. When the guy hops in and takes off, he discovers that someone chained the shuttle to a multi-ton chunk of scrap.

The shuttle can barely get off the ground, let alone maneuver around the nearby buildings.

...

They seriously didn't even have a motion sensor alarm or anything left on the ship? No cheap droid perched on top to sound the alert if someone tries to mess with it? I assumed that last one in particular would be standard procedure for police and security operations, given how common robots are in this setting, but nope! Cassa and Harry could have snuck around and hotwired their own damned ship before they noticed.

The best part is that the person who chained the ship to that chunk of debris probably had nothing to do with Cassa at all. Just some disgruntled local who noticed there was no one guarding the ship and decided to fuck with their masters while the opportunity was there.

I wonder if perhaps that's also part of what the clanging metal bits is for? A call to stochastic terrorism for anyone brave and/or foolish enough to give it a shot.

Anyway, this really does drive in the point Harry and Cassa made in their earlier conversation, about how fat and lazy and blinded by their own success the oppressors have become. It won't last long, once the rebellion racks up enough genuine W's, but for now they'll happily take advantage of it.

...

Having already slipped the loop and subdued at least one more enemy, Cassa and Harry use the few minutes they've bought themselves to get to a vehicle hangar. Seeing that both a heavy armored car and a fast hover-bike are available for theft, Cassa has a rather devilishly clever idea, and asks Harry if he has any of those explosive charges left.

The armored car is released from the garage, charging down the street passed the enemy line. They shoot it to a stop, crowd around to apprehend the non-existent drivers, and lose nearly half their remaining squad to the remotely detonated charges.

A second later, while the survivors are panicking, trying to drag their wounded friends away from the wreckage, and being generally disarrayed, the fast hoverbike carries Cassa and Harry shooting away in the opposite direction.

Now that there is thinking like an insurgent!

Freed from his restraints, Douchenozzle stares off after the escaped hoverbike. Not enough able-bodied men left to risk a pursuit. No flyable shuttle left to intercept them with. Now, instead of the quiet loss of two thuggish mooks who he could have swept under the rug, Douchenozzle has the highly public deaths and injuries of multiple other, probably higher-valued, soldiers to his "credit." As well as minor-to-moderate damage to a company landing craft, the logistical and bureaucratic cost of an interplanetary mission with nothing to show for it, and - perhaps most importantly - the broad daylight humiliation of the company's security forces in the middle of a population already on the brink of revolt.

He stares at the departing vehicle, and he sees Boss Dickface telling him to leave well enough alone.

There are two things he could be thinking in the above shot.

He could be realizing that there was a reason that his older, wiser, and more cynical supervisor ordered him not to do this. That this is indeed all his fault. He should have done as he was told. Or, if not, he should have at least gone about this like a detective instead of a feudal lord. He shouldn't have tried to be a hero. He shouldn't have tried to make his dumb copaganda movies real. He could be planning his own resignation letter, and desperately hoping that Dickface is in an extra merciful mood and lets him off with a little tiny bit of employability to his name.

Or he could be blaming this all on Cassian Andor and planning a deranged Hail Mary. Either in the vain hope of saving his career, or just out of spite.

Not yet sure which it is. If the former, we've probably seen the last of Douchenozzle. If the latter, he'll likely stick around to be a supporting antagonist for at least the middle chunk of this season.

The other person most strongly effected by this resolution is Mom. Sitting in her trashed apartment, crying as the last bit of (adopted) close family she has is chased away over the horizon, probably never to return.

Her husband, we know, was publically executed some time ago. The little Kenari boy they saved together was part of his legacy in her life.

Granted, the "saving" of Cassian Andor was more than a little dubious.

...

She was *probably* right that the Republic was about to wipe out his tribe. She didn't know that for sure, though. And, with that being unsure, well...she basically touched down on this postapocalyptic low tech planet, stunned and kidnapped a native boy, and took him home with her.

That is, um. Well, incidents like this have definitely happened in real life. They aren't regarded highly, at least in modern times, at least by most people.

There maaaaaay be some extra context that would make her look less bad if I had it. As it is though, I have very, very mixed (at best) feelings about Mom.

...

Bix is rescued and hidden away by some friends. Cassa's other local friends and associates can do little but wish him the best, even though most of them also wish he could have paid back the money and favors he owed them before skipping town. The surviving Douche Force members withdraw and call for pickup from their mothership.

The episode ends with the final flashback to Mom, the late Dad, and Cuckcube bringing young Cassa aboard their ship along with the stuff they stole from the wreck. Cut against the modern scene of adult Cassa boarding another small ship with Harry, leaving yet another life and yet more loved ones behind him forever. Chased out of yet another harsh-but-liveable equilibrium by the tyrants who are slowly burning the galaxy to a crisp.


That's the first three episodes of Star Wars: Andor. And really, the show could have end right here and it would be perfectly sufficient. Adjust the pacing a little, and you could restructure these episodes into an excellent standalone 90 minute movie.

Heck, change a few of the names and adjust the technology aesthetics, and you could restructure them into an excellent standalone 90 minute original science fiction movie. This story is Star Wars. It fits Star Wars, it enriches Star Wars, and it doesn't clash with the rest of Star Wars. But it doesn't *have to be* Star Wars. They could have launched a brand new dystopian scifi franchise with this movie, and I think it would have been successful. Maybe not as successful without the Star Wars brand recognition, but successful.

I'm actually trying to decide if I would have preferred that, now. On one hand, showing what the existing multimedia giant that is Star Wars is still capable of and potentially breathing new life and new depth into it has higher potential. On the other, by that same token, Star Wars has so much corporate investment in it that I'm not sure it would ever be allowed to really be tilted in the direction Andor wants to pull it. Granted, it might have quickly grown the same problems as a fresh IP, so...yeah, I really don't know.

Refreshing my memory with some wiki-reading now, Cassian Andor (I've been misspelling it, apparently) was kinda sorta in charge of the team that sacrifices their leaves to steal the death star plans in "Rogue One." Like I said at the beginning of this series, I remember enjoying Rogue One, but I barely remember anything that actually happened in it. More to the point, I have absolutely zero recollections of this character. *Maybe* I liked Cassian when I saw him then, but I probably forgot he existed within hours of finishing the movie. I certainly am not going to forget him now, though.

Part of what makes this show (so far) feel like it belongs in Star Wars despite it being so unlike Star Wars is that, in many ways, Cassa is sort of a grittier, grungier version of Luke Skywalker. I pointed out the visual allusions connecting Harry to Obi-Wan and his ship to the Millennium Falcon earlier, but it goes a lot deeper than that. Both orphans whose adoptive families acquired them through murky circumstances. Both deprived of their original and adoptive families by the callousness of the regime. Both get their hands on pieces of information technology that make them the object of a manhunt (well, with Cassa it was more of a secondary aggravating factor, but still) and push them into the arms of the ARR. Etc.

The difference is that Luke is from a fairy tail version of this story, while Cassa hails from something much closer to reality.

Luke had comfortable poverty in a rural village surrounded by an enchanted forest desert full of whimsical creatures and dangerous bandits. He resisted the call to adventure because he was, again, comfortably poor and out-of-the-way. He felt that he was destined for something more, but he wasn't sure why. And then of course it turns out that he has magic powers, and that his father is one of the galaxy's top evil overlords, and so on.

Cassa's poverty seems to have been comfortable, relatively speaking, but only because he and his foster parents did crime. No scenic science-fantasy wilderness and wandering gnome caravans around his village, just rust and debt and corruption. Star Wars always had some gritty scrapyard aesthetics that lent its mythic storytelling a vestige of realness, but in Andor it isn't just aesthetics, it goes much further down (not ALL THE WAY down, there's still a bit of mythic larger-than-life-ness at the core of Andor, but it's buried). Cassa loses his family piecemeal to the wear and tear of being criminals under an authoritarian regime, and it probably never once occurred to him that he was destined for anything; he just wants to cling onto whatever vestiges of family he still has, and gets himself into more trouble grasping for them. If Cassian turned out to be a force user, or one of his parents turned out to be someone important, it would completely ruin the story. For Luke, those revelations were only natural. For Cassa, they'd kill the verisimilitude dead in an instant.

Heck, I'm not even sure if involving the force in this series at all would be a good idea. Maybe it happens later on, and if so I'll see how I feel about it when I get there. But where I'm sitting now, Cassa's world is such a fundamentally unmagical one that the prospect alone seems jarring.

Part of me wonders if, perhaps, the reason for this change in tone is because of the creators' greater proximity to real life fascism. "A New Hope" was - in addition to George Lucas messing around with Campbell archetypes and samurai tropes - a commentary on how the twentieth century saw the United States becoming the Evil Empire, with the recent Vietnam War informing the imagery of rebels hiding in jungles, villages burned by faceless imperial troopers, etc. The mythical, fairy-tale vibe was the lens of someone sitting over here and criticising the atrocities their government committed over there. Disapproving, but a safe kind of disapproval. The creators themselves have no fear of the Galactic Empire, just distaste.

Andor was produced at a time when American imperialism was very much well into the process of turning inward. The people who made this show were scared of the Galactic Empire. Are scared of it. For them, it's NOT just something being done to people on the other side of the world.

It's perhaps for the best that this series finished its second and final season as planned in the early months of 2025. What with how Disney and the other major media companies have been bending the knee, I'm not sure if it could have completed its run any later than it did.

...ironic, all the bitchboys complaining about the sequel trilogy being too woke and thus playing into Jar-Jar Abrams and Co's hands with the culture war marketing. This? This show right here? Andor is what actual woke Star Wars looks like. Granted, it could have done a bit more centerstage on the race and gender fronts (I think having Harry be anything other than a white guy might have helped here), but it's treatment of Bix, Cassa's late foster father, etc are still solid enough liberal-progressive supports to buttress the very genuine antifascist core.


I'll be doing the June Fast Lane item and maybe one or two more items from the main queue before continuing season one of Andor. There are still nine episodes to go.