I thought this was going to be another typical low quality Star Wars production to toss into Disney's hoard of content. I initially struggled to continue past the first two establishing episodes because I had low expectations from Disney's track record. Looking back, those episodes really flesh out the narrative and I'm extremely glad that once the season finished airing, I continued to give it the full chance it deserves. Star Wars: Andor completely subverted and exceeded any expectations I had for a Disney+ show.
All the filmmaking aspects excelled throughout the presentation. Set design, props, costumes, makeup, lighting, camera work, dialog, acting, tone, themes, character writing, choreography, stunts, CGI, blended landscapes, puppeteering, animatronics, music, SFX, ADR, and much more. There are even some good-faithed callbacks/homages that come off very natural rather than solely serving memberberries. I'm taken aback that there's actual talent and effort poured into a modern-day Disney production. This really feels like it's apart of the Star Wars universe rather than what we've recently been getting from Disney, which has felt like amateurish cosplay filmed at theme parks with multi-million dollar budgets. It's as if this show actually cares about crafting the art instead of soullessly milking the intellectual property. It's a well needed change of pace.
This is an incredibly underappreciated show in my opinion. The narrative is the methodical type that gets more interesting the longer it goes on and becomes even more charismatic during rewatches as you see how all the pieces align. I feel it deserves so much more recognition but will have difficulty receiving it due to how many of the Star Wars normies will be turned away by the extensive dialog sequences, time allocated to characterization, sparse action scenes, and fewer colorful lasers to signal dopamine to their brain. All of which are reasons that make this some of the best Star Wars has ever been but I can understand how this will turn away the casual audiences who only want to see lots of flashy lights, laugh at humorless jokes every 5 minutes, and distract themselves with substanceless action.
There's a little retconning but I'd say most of it is positive and none of it drastically change the world or established characters like how many of the recent Star Wars additions do. An issue that I have with the show is what feels like checkboxes where you can tell they are going out of their way to meet the criteria for in their plot/characters. However, unlike how many of the other Disney shows and movies meet these checkboxes, this show is able to do it with good purpose, intention, intelligence, and execution. Because of how well they are integrated, it's basically become a non-issue for me here.
This show is fan service done right. High quality production, amazing actors, and a passionate set of directors that care about their source material. This is a great watch for intermediate fans of the Star Wars universe and brings insight back into the cunning political structure with actual competent antagonists. It's even particularly great for non-fans that are just interested in a compelling narrative. I can't wait until season 2 next year. This might've just been a creative endeavor that miraculously flew under the corporate radar and avoided its chokehold. I hope the executives don't see the reception of this and push changes or set additional creative-restricting criteria to cater to a broader audiences for Season 2. Creating high quality content to fewer, more heavily-invested fans will always be better than sacrificing quality storytelling to appeal to the masses.
In the future, I'm also really hoping that this team will be given creative control for other Disney projects like Marvel, which is in desperate need of coherent direction. Whatever set this apart from Disney's normal production procedures, they need to continue with it and we might end up with an abundance of well made modern media instead of the recent soulless catering garbage spewing off the conveyor belt.
(The following describes my feelings about Season 1. I guess I had dumb faith that they would stay consistent between seasons but I was poorly mistaken. My comment on Season 2 is here: https://trakt.tv/comments/661270)
Absolutely AMAZING. This has to be the best superhero medium put into video form aside from One Punch Man. Lately, films and TV have been rapidly going downhill and my hope for good quality entertainment was mostly lost. I was not expecting this level of action, vast worldbuilding, detailed animation, talented voice acting, sophisticated writing, tonal maturity, nor character depth- especially in 2021 after the entire entertainment industry is recovering from a certain pandemic. In my opinion, this completely blows past any sort of MCU/DCEU movie, animated Justice League adaptation, or really any other animated comic book adaptations. I went into this completely blind, I highly recommend you do the same (and stick around til the end of every episode because they each have additional content after the credits) Unfortunately for now it's only available on Amazon Prime but I will absolutely be purchasing this once it is (hopefully) released on BluRay. This will hang on the Masterpiece shelf in my movie and TV collection.
[2024 Rating Update: Season 1: 10/10 | Season 2: 4/10 | Average: 7/10]
After the recent decline in writing quality over the recent seasons, I was hoping they were saving all of their mojo for the final season. Boy was I wrong. Trying to copy Game of Thrones here with a final turd of a season as a sendoff? This final season of Supernatural was absolutely abysmal. Though as bad as the final season of Game of Thrones was, the final episodes of Supernatural (the ones that were actually focused on the main plot) are still far superior because they at least know how to stay true to their two main characters.
The entire final season is carried by meta-humor, callbacks, and bringing back as many previous guest stars as possible. Regardless of if the guest stars make any sense or impact the story in any meaningful way, they'll have the entire plot revolve around them to serve as a mcguffin to carry on the plot to the next mcguffin. "Developed" characters making the same decisions, mistakes, and apologies they have in every prior season. I guess it counts as character development if they repeatedly "learn" the same lesson and don't change themselves /s. Plot convenience after plot convenience (even if you break the fourth wall and acknowledge it in the script!) isn't good writing. It's lazy writing. Think you won't have time to do stupid side filler episodes during a final season consisting of only 20 episodes? Wrong. As always, they have to work their run-of-the-mill cases, regardless of the fact that the world is ending... again... (this time even something as big of a deal as GOD himself). 85% of the season was entirely filler with only 15% of it left for the main plotline to be scattered into those filler episodes for just a few minutes each. The entire season felt like obnoxious fan service....for characters and plot points that have already been resolved and concluded??? I guess "No One's Ever Really Gone"(https://youtu.be/gNTLC_uiGFA) really speaks monuments. They went ahead and destroyed any closure the side characters' original plotlines had in favor for these new endings which feel so cheap and undeserving AKA shitty retconning. It completely undermines/disrespects the sacrifices and any development these characters had in their original arcs. If they wanted to bring back characters for good fan service and nostalgia, they could have at least brought back the heavy hitters like Lucifer (more of him), Crowley, Bobby (the actual character instead of a superficial cameo), John Winchester, Loki, Cain, or Azazel but I doubt the writers would've had enough talent to handle them. Instead, we got a bunch of second rate hunters and side characters (ones I'd argue very few people actually care about) stealing the spotlight which felt extremely forced and unearned, all the while it was clear the writers wanted me to root for them or applaud them anytime they'd make their reappearance. If you want me to root or cheer for a character you have to earn it through writing good characters and developing them, not solely because they existed in a prior season.
Somehow each season seems to increasingly surprise me with poorer acting, especially from the extras. The acting has gotten so bad from the main cast, its hard to ignore and not cringe at their mannerisms they've developed from playing the same characters and saying the same repetitive lines all these years. As much as I love Jensen and Jared, when you see them step out of their character and into another one, their poor acting really shines; not because you're not used to them playing other roles but because its really bad. Though that could entirely be the fault of the directors, which would not surprise me.
All of the degrading plot behavior and the strict formula-following that the recent seasons have been experiencing more and more of as time goes on has been amplified by 200% for the final stretch in the series. In the shows case, the more it "carried on", the more unbearable it became. It's truly sad to see them go after such a long journey but thankfully its come to an end before it's gotten any worse because the writing staff have absolutely tarnished whatever resemblance of a unique and engaging story was left.
I must say that the final episode seriously felt like Jack wrote it instead of Chuck. It's truly a great metaphor; The same feeling of when people with no idea and no passion for a project take over another persons creation. An ingenuine presentation and almost like a fan fiction. Told by someone who wants to end the characters in whatever way they feel rather than a well written and thought out conclusive ending to our two characters journey. I couldn't think of a more cookie cutter and easy ending. I know they made it a little cheesy towards the end of the episode but it feels like the writers are mocking the audience with exactly how bad this ending was... They knew exactly what they were doing and it truly irritates me. F### that Carry On cover, it was like the cherry on top of the steaming pile of s###, a spit in the face. I'm beginning to think that they were serious when Chuck mentioned how he adored the Game of Thrones ending, because clearly the writers took notes.
As much as I enjoyed the earlier seasons of Supernatural, I would describe this final season and many of the other recent seasons in two words: Lazy and Formulaic.
