The new Star Wars series, Andor, debuted tonight on Disney Plus with its first three episodes, and I found it really, really slow and drawn out, boring most of the time, and this is definitely not “Star Wars.”
Creator Tony Gilroy made it clear that this isn’t going to be for kids and he is right, it’s not for 9-year-olds, and Gilroy also said it won’t feature any Easter Eggs or references to the Skywalkers and such, and he is right about that, too.
What Andor is, is a hard science-fiction series, it isn’t sci-fi fantasy like Star Wars, it’s closer to Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek or The Expanse than anything “Star Wars.”
The Andor plot is pretty familiar as it’s just a “bad guy” on the run from “the cops” but this drags out through the three episodes. You could actually just watch Episode 3, and I don’t think you would miss a beat.
Update: I want to give a quick update on this review and say Andor is a good show.
Per what I said below about a slow start and needing payoff, there is payoff, so I will say if you gave up on the show to give it another chance.
Original article continues:
Andor is a super slow burn
Aside from Diego Luna and Stellan Skarsgård’s characters (Skarsgård isn’t even listed on IMDb for some reason, but his stuntman is), does anyone care about any of the other characters (oh, maybe the cute bot, right?)?
How about the guy that sees his girlfriend apprehended and like ten guns are pointed at him; so he runs down the steps like a fool and gets shot? Huh? Yeah, dude, she’s better off you’re dead. That was terrible writing.
Speaking of, a note to people not trained in combat: Don’t ever punch anyone in the throat.
Yes, the cinematography is well done, the set pieces look really good, and Andor probably has the highest budget of any Disney Plus show (thank Gilroy for that) but we’ve all seen that before. Where? Amazon’s Rings of Power, which is just as slow and boring.
It’s also dark and gritty – yeah, that’s cool – but nothing much happens other than Cassian Andor is on the run and escapes. That’s all that happens through the three episodes.
Instead of premiering the series as three episodes, I actually think it would have done better as one long extended episode. How many people were bored by the first episode and stopped watching? Or stopped watching with the just as boring second episode? Hawkeye lost 200k viewers when it debuted both episodes in the same night.
Much like Rings of Power, I am hoping Andor really picks up (note: I am reviewing the three episodes as they are not the entire series which I haven’t seen or hope them to be), and since the series is 12 episodes, let’s hope it does pick up and that we get the much-needed payoff that such a slow start demands. But hope isn’t what this series is about, is it? That’s Episode IV.
