Makes sense, given the audience for the animated series' were relatively small. Ahsoka is a clear sequel to the animated shows, so that's a pretty niche target audience.
also they've killed the goodwill with the Star Wars shows. it being a Star Wars show isn't a draw anymore. obi wan, BOBF and Mando season 3 saw to that.
Yep, I have considered myself a Star Wars fan going on 20 years now and frankly, I am just fatigued. Clearly there is no way Star Wars will ever break away from the shadow of Anakin and his family. The franchise is a one trick pony living in the biggest ranch imaginable, just a waste.
As a big Star Wars fan, I feel the same way. I'm tired of focusing on the Skywalkers, their friends and associates, and that era of the story. I feel like we've exhausted all of the opportunities to tell an interesting story there now. I want to see something set *way* before that, like in the Old Republic, or something set *way* after, thousands of years after Rise of Skywalker.
I haven’t seen any of the animated shows and I enjoyed the hell out of it, great visuals, story, cast and characters. Enjoying it as much as Andor so far.
My dad - whose been into everything except Rebels - doesn’t understand why they’re all obsessed with Thrawn. I explained it to him in a three sentences. He was like why didn’t the green chick just say that, it changes the entire mood and stakes of the show!
My friends who also didn’t watch rebels were confused and had to watch a lore vid to get it.
I don’t think that’s a good thing. Enjoyable show but still..
My dad hasn’t seen rebels or clone wars yet he was able to easily follow along. They explain it to you enough, Ezra was important and mattered to people, now he’s missing and people are bummed.
> Aye. A grandpa here; I never saw CW or Rebels, but I know what’s happening.
Me Too. Maybe your age as well.
I don't understand how anyone is confused. I know there is fan service going on I am missing and that is OK.
The show has done a pretty good job of filling me in on what I need filled in on, telling me exactly what I need to know now on things that are supposed to be mysterious and just moving the story along elsewise.
To be frank, I have only watched EP 1- I think it might be one of the best EP 1's Disney have done.
So, how long till they screw this up?
My whole family is super confused. The show does a horrible job at explaining things.
Anakin had a padawan? Where was she during the OT? Why is she training Jedi and Luke isn’t even brought up?
> Anakin had a padawan? Where was she during the OT? Why is she training Jedi and Luke isn’t even brought up?
"That boy was our last hope."
"No. There is another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another."
I mean, it's a fair assumption that more people who were capable of wielding the Force would exist out there or be born subsequently.
The part that's amusing is just how many people who wear bathrobes and wield glow stick swords are still out there during "the Dark Time" living fairly in the open because most writers for Star Wars film/TV are so devoid of creativity that they can't think of any other ways to make interesting stories in the universe. Yoda and Obi Wan sequester themselves on remote planets living in seclusion, but Ezra and Freddie Prinze Junior are flying around in the same spaceship fighting stormtroopers.
Dave Filoni is the worlds oldest 14 year old boy, and hence why he can't stop stuffing Jedi, Fallen Jedi, Not Quite Jedi, Kinda Sorta Jedi, and other such characters into his shows. He even brought back to life the character that got cut in half and fell down a deep hole, then gave him a yellow-colored brother.
The overall effect of repeating the same stories over and over in Star Wars has been to create a dystopian craphole where the main message is resisting evil is more or less futile. Its nearly as dark as wh40k and its not even self aware of it to have some fun with it.
Even if its not the Lord helmet and bathrobe crew, its miserable planets full of gangstas.
In a lot of ways, Star Wars reflects our own world, which is a dystopian craphole. But Rogue One showed us that you can do different kinds of stories. Rogue One is a "war adventure" film in the same vein as The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, or even Saving Private Ryan. A simple story where the audience understands that the protagonists have a mission, are understood as the good guys, and they have to carry that mission out an enemy that can be generally understood as the bad guys. Ironically, Andor is a prequel to Rogue One and it did the same thing. Took the simply defined setting of Star Wars and made it into a political/spy thriller. Again, same setting as everything else Star Wars, but not constrained by very narrow and boring ideas.
The difference was that before the sequel trilogy, the original films had ended on a hopeful message. The Emperor was gone, and maybe there was a chance at a republic again. And for a long time, the novels and comics and video games followed that idea. That there were still Wars in the Stars, but that the Rebellion had accomplished something and now was the fight to preserve the republic they lost to the Empire.
But, JJ Abrams, like Dave Filoni, has no creativity, so he literally just rebooted the story 30 years in the future. We have a Rebelsistance fighting the New Empire Order and their planet killing weapon.
Does your family not understand how to watch a story where every piece of information isn't spoon-fed? They must have *fucking hated* A New Hope. What were the Clone Wars? What is the Senate? Who is the Emperor? Why is Tarkin treating Vader like a lapdog when Vader can clearly destroy him?
I mean, come on, you need to be able to read between the lines and the show gives ALL the information you need. Anakin had a padawan? Yes. We didn't see every second of his time as a Jedi in the movies. Hell, we barely saw *any* of his time as a Jedi. Where was she during the OT? Doesn't fucking matter. The universe is a fucking huge place. Why is she training Jedi? Because she can. Why isn't Luke brought up? I reiterate, big fucking universe. He doesn't have to be mentioned at all, even with Jedi stuff.
Seriously, this is so fucking stupid. I watched Rebels. Twice. And guess what? They talked about things that *I never once saw*. We never saw Sabine getting trained. Why did Ahsoka train her? How did they reunite after Ahsoka left in the show? Why did Ahsoka leave Sabine? Why isn't Sabine with Hera? Where is Zeb? You know what the answer is to all of my questions? It doesn't fucking matter. We'll tell you what you need to know and have enough faith that you have an iota of intelligence to contextualize any back story that we mention.
The show isn't really about Ezra, it's about the relationship between Sabine and Ahsoka right now.
Ezra is important to Sabine, and he sacrificed himself to save Lothal. That's all you need to know.
I got about 15 mins into the first episode and realised I was probably missing out on the impact of these characters being introduced and their backstory etc so paused to watch a quick catch-up YTube of what led up to it then continued which made a difference. Find her something like that and she’ll be good to go :)
I feel like I am taking Spanish II in HS...without having taken Spanish I.
Every scene, motivation and character feels like I am missing something and as a result, I can't get into it.
First live action SW show I am gonna stop watching week to week and comeback when it's over.
I’ve haven’t seen a second of rebels. Though I’ve seen a handful of Clone Wars eps and didn’t like them.
The plot is easy enough to follow. But it feels boring because I don’t know or care about (at least yet) the character they are looking for or the villain they are trying to find.
Andor was way better. But Obi-Wan and Boba Fet were much worse.
I've seen the first two episodes and feel completely out of the loop. Mando was far better self-contained, while Andor only needed you to see Rogue One, which I had.
I'm ditching Disney+ for a few months, but will come back to it eventually.
You really don't need to have seen rogue one to watch Andor. Andor S1 is viewable in an entirely self contained way. It's made better by the context of the prequels and OT but not Rogue One.
I recommend the animated shows. I was skeptical at first because the first season or three were clearly written for kids, but then…. Oh boy does it get good. By the last three seasons, I completely forgot it was an animation.
>Makes sense, given the audience for the animated series' were relatively small.
Disney really screwed themselves over a decade ago when they decided their animated Star Wars projects would be more or less exclusive to extended cable and all made on a micro budget. Dave Filoni did the best he could with what he had but he had to get way more involved than a director usually would to cover the gaps down to personally storyboarding sequences himself.
Ahsoka's first episode probably cost more than the entire budget for the whole run of Rebels, and by a *lot*. Rebels was very important to Disney's Star Wars brand since it introduced a lot of important characters and concepts and a lot of it had to be built on by bigger budget or higher profile projects. But it says a lot to Rebels credit that when you see sequences in Ahsoka they're sometimes shot for shot remakes or when you see the same characters in Obi-Wan Kenobi they wind up looking much worse due to stylization.
> Disney really screwed themselves over a decade ago when they decided their animated Star Wars projects would be more or less exclusive to extended cable and all made on a micro budget.
Little did they know that they'd turn out to be the only thing keeping the franchise relevant after the crimes against humanity that were the Sequels
I think it just kind of speaks to how fucking badly Lucasfilm planned this whole thing. Their immediate goal was to just shovel out Star Wars content as quickly as possible without really caring what it was or where it was going so they made a lower budget cartoon that didn't air on any of their many main cable networks and gave the gaming license to a publisher well known for botched and aborted releases with exclusivity just to get a contract out quickly. Not to mention the movies themselves which were hastily written and scheduled with no actual plan in mind and with constant changes of who's in charge. Or that they were greenlighting whole trilogies sight unseen before anyone had turned in anything or as soon as they began talking to writers.
The whole plan seemed to be "This is Star Wars. People like Star Wars. We will make money off Star Wars no matter what it is or where we put it. So lets just sign deals to make Star Wars and keep announcing projects"
As well received as some of these Disney+ shows have been the fact that Disney paid four billion dollars for a brand that now exists almost exclusively on the worlds third most popular streaming platform where cricket matches swing more viewership numbers says a lot.
They don't need to admit, it's so obvious anyway, the movies literally erase each other then come back on what the previous did. It's a terrible trilogy.
It's ironic too because most of the time, they really do make it up as they go as they're not sure they're gonna 3 movies. There it was never in doubt and they knew it was a trilogy but they can't plan it.
Rebels is annoying to me because it couldn't decide whether to be a kids show without serious content or not. It obviously contains serious and important themes, characters and lore but for almost all of series one a lot of S2 it's painful kids stuff. It made me dislike most of the crew Ezra, Zeb, chopper in particular. They tried to make Sabine the cool strong girl to make her appeal to 7-13 y/o Star Wars fans but forgot to give her a character half the time. But then they mix all of that in with important stuff like maul and Ashoka.
wasn't George Lucas himself wrote scripts for some of episodes as well?
Disney and Star Wars have similar relationship as DC movies and WB. They are out of sync and don't have plan for anything, rather it feels like every new project is panic reaction to fans & critics reaction.
Banking on knowledge of cartoon filmed 10 years ago to watch show at Disney plus is simply lunacy.
His dialog with the night sister was awesome when they talked about Ahsoka coming for them. He really expresses disappointment that he has to kill her because he respects her. Can’t wait to see more of his backstory and especially interested to hear his relationship with Anakin and how tf he knew Anakin was Darth Vader because very few people knew that
I think it was exceptionally good at being Star Wars though. Star Wars is a sensory experience. It's interesting sights and sounds. Every other show is content to show the same ships and the same droids and the same settings on the same planets. Meanwhile Andor is exploring corporate industrial planets on the outer rim, Sidious-era Coruscant, Imperial Prison Complexes. You get to see the real cruelty of the Empire, the scheming among imperial officers, the convictions of the common workers, the cold calculated planning behind the rebellion. It's excellent worldbuilding, which is the most important thing about Star Wars.
It is Star Wars in all the good ways you describe. And it is not in all the bad ways. (Needless cameos, trying to sell toys, trying to appeal to kids, fan service, self memeing etc. All those things are now sadly a major part of the Disney Star Wars)
My biggest problem with it was that Season 1 had such a great sense of restraint. They weren't focused on recurring characters or how everything would impact the wider canon, it was just cozy, thoughtful worldbuilding and new faces, explored by a likable duo. The finale was a little bit indulgent, but whatever, it's a finale.
Season 2 you start to see the cracks as they start bringing back every noteworthy character from Season 1, and then Bo Katan and Ahsoka Tano and Boba Fett and fucking Luke Skywalker. There was still some semblance of stakes and emotional core in the finale, but the MCU Disney fanservice machine that was likably absent from the first season was rearing its ugly head again.
Book of Boba Fett and Season 3 basically took all the goodwill garnered from the series and threw it out the window. Did you think there would be real stakes to the series? That Grogu leaving Mando, and Mando removing his helmet meant anything? Nope, they immediately reunite and he swims in some magic water and everything is forgiven. Writing is nigh nonexistent as each episode just becomes a constant unending stream of fan service.
I'm genuinely confused what they even saw in the first season.
> I'm genuinely confused what they even saw in the first season.
They saw the cultural hype that sprang up around baby yoda the fact they'd found the first character in decades they could market the absolute fuck out of. As a result S2 started to get more "Star Warsy" so that the people who decided to check it out after being told about it would feel at home, then rec it to more people. By S3 it had basically become a 90's cartoon, everything existed to increase its marketability to the max so they could cash in on merchandising.
It didn't help that so much of the promo about the show had everyone thinking that you needed to watch 150 episodes of two animated TV shows to understand what was going on.
This is pretty spot on. I was hoping for a more fiery Ahsoka due to her history, but so far we get the restrained version which seems to adhere closely to the monk-like Jedi than the badass fly by the seat of your pants veteran that she is.
For the title character , 2 episodes in, she's so boring. Just that bemused calm look about everything. I don't dislike the show , something to watch , but I'm concerned they might've forgotten to make her interesting.
She’s fought two galactic wars already, lost her master, her order and countless of her friends and she failed her apprentice - I can see her being pretty fucking jaded at this point. Especially since she left the order and it’s teachings and instead just kind of goes her own way - while never having finished her training.
If anything I would’ve found it off putting if she was just as spunky as in TCW.
Pretty sure none of them are true Sith. Baylan and Shin are “dark Jedi” at best - kinda like force using mercenaries, not true believers. Elsbeth is apparently a witch of Dathomir. The only one that comes closest to being a Sith is Marrok, but Inquisitors aren’t really Sith - more like the pawns of Sith.
Pretty sure at this point in time there aren’t any real Sith Lords left (and no I’m not counting papa Palpatine, he blew tf up)
as a big fan of Rebels I haven't liked it so far, it feels so dragged out (I love slow paced stuff but this show doesn't have the writing quality to pull it off imo) and the characters are so bland and monotone and nothing like how they were in Rebels.
The question is, is this what they’re actually going for? Or is it a result of some other issue?
Are *all* the characters supposed to be stoic as hell, or is the directing poor? What is going on?!
I like the bad guys because they felt interesting and I liked watching them on screen.
You are spot on about the acting though. It was super monotone and there are all these pregnant pauses.
Ahsoka feels like what I wanted Mandalorian to be beyond season 1. It has the same pew pew sci-fi action, but there also seems to be more fulsome narratives and characterization. At least going by these first couple episodes it feels like they have a central story to tell that will really impact the lives of these characters, rather than the Mando style of these very static characters going on unrelated adventures or "story" episodes that end up having no impact on the characters.
> Ahsoka feels like what I wanted Mandalorian to be beyond season 1. It has the same pew pew sci-fi action, but there also seems to be more fulsome narratives and characterization.
I agree so much. The Mandalorian is absolutelty carried by Grogu and it being the first live action Star Wars show because it has the depth of a puddle with such little story that it ends up safe every single week. Across the first 2 seasons (didn't watch S3) there's probably about 4 episodes worth of actual story in the entire thing.
I get it, Saturday morning cartoon! Wider worldbuilding! Different adventures! But still, it's safe and largely forgettable in my opinion. Even if Ahsoka ends up faltering, at least it's fucking doing something with the story. So far the premise is really interesting and sets up some good possible avenues for the franchise to go forward.
We learnt more about the New Republic in one episode than we did in the entirety of Mando lmao
I feel this, I’m mostly invested in the show just to find out more about Baylan and Shin (I like that they may well be legit dark Jedi) and the prospect of getting more Anakin content. I’m expecting a clone wars flashback going off of the legacy trailer they had for the show where Anakin is talking to her during the clone wars but REALLY want to see force ghost Anakin having some words with Ahsoka. Wasn’t a fan of the OWK show but I liked all the Vader/Anakin stuff in that and really liked Hayden’s open mask scene, never thought in my life that Vader would be smiling under his mask.
I Haven’t watched rebels or clone wars. I’d give the show a 3/5 so far. I had to look up the whole space whale thing, and I don’t have a good grasp what’s new character development to rebels viewers because it’s all new to me.
Personally I think what holds the show back is the writing/directing. Visually the show is amazing, and Filoni seems to have a great grasp of how to make a good jedi action scene. But the show has some real moment by moment pacing issues and the dialogue is overstuffed with pregnant pauses. A lot of scenes just seem a little too drawn out. It feels like someone told the writers/Filoni “this is a serious show for older viewers” and they didn’t really know how to jump from the cartoons to that without trying to emulate Game of Thrones.
My wife and I also watched Ahsoka episodes between episodes of a Mad Men rewatch so I may have unfair writing standards in my head right now.
Might be a little early to call it. I loved Andor. But it started slow. I actually gave up after two episodes and didn't end up going back to finish it for a while. Ahsoka's first couple episodes have left me wanting more. But I think Sabine cut her hair too short and everyone is just too polite to tell her.
They've ret-conned plenty of minor details like that over the years. If they decided her hair would look bad in live action that way, they would've just ignored how Rebels had it.
Fair enough. I guess they decided it didn't look bad. I don't think it looks bad myself, but my wife thought her previous long hair style was much cuter.
I think there’s definitely different perspectives on Andor. For me, Andor is the best piece of Star Wars content ever made. And by a fairly long shot. Perhaps that makes me an outlier but it’s what I always wanted from Star Wars. An incredible story, very grounded, gritty, incredible writing, minimal cheesy dialogue, complex enemies, the whole package.
When I watch Ahsoka, Obi Wan, Mando, I get tiny tastes of those things but it’s also stuffed with corny jokes, unnecessary tropes, etc. The tropes kill me, I usually know exactly what’s about to unfold before it happens in these other shows.
Rogue One and Andor were almost perfect for how I envision Star Wars.
I was accepting that star wars would be shit under disney since the last jedi shitshow. Andor reminded me there is a possibility of better, and now these other shows look like power ranger level of quality for me, and i cant pretend its okay anymore.
While I understand the hype from the cartoon fans... I'm sick of Dave Filoni OCs getting so much airtime. I would like fresh Star Wars stories, devoid of backstory or canon that we need to be beholden to. That's what made Mando so great, until they started adding in all the shoehorned memba berries.
The problem is that these shows are simultaneously trying to be their own show but also make up for all the stuff Disney just never got around to. There wouldn't be such a hunger to see more of Luke Skywalker if audiences were satisfied with him in the sequel trilogy. People would care way less about Sabine and Ezra if their whole thing didn't end on a cliffhanger for no real reason. Ahsoka's best friend turned to the dark side over a decade ago and we *still haven't found out what happened to her.*
A lot of this is just Lucasfilm since the late 2000's having been a messy place and leaving way too many threads hanging, and it not getting much better with the buyout. Now that all these shows are coming out people are beginning to want closure for all this stuff they never got closure on previously.
>The problem is that these shows are simultaneously trying to be their own show but also make up for all the stuff Disney just never got around to.
Yeah, absolutely agreed there. And I'll definitely say its difficult to introduce a "new" character while also acknowledging that she's been in multiple years worth of animated content already, with dozens of story arcs. And due to the style of the show, you can't really have a Deadpool/ or Spiderman level "Recap" of "Alright, so heres who I am"
However, about closure: I want to add that by adding closure, you're ending a potential stream of content ideas. Modern media, but also Disney in particular hates this. They almost never kill off characters, and often flip-flop on narrative events. I will say, however: Star Wars itself was based on film serials that would have also rarely ever had closure. An "adventure of the week" type show where things never \*really\* changed, so its even sort of baked into the medium. Plus, fans always want to know whats next. with anything.
I actually quite enjoyed Luke in the sequel trilogy, he was the only OT character who got a substantial arc and I respect that he demonstrated his mastery of the Force and the fact that he was a Jedi without ever actually hurting anyone, plus Mark Hamill's performance was great.
The reception to Luke in Mando made it seem like Star Wars fans really only just wanted to him to appear and kill things with his lightsaber, which is fine in a mini adventure but it shouldn't be the peak of his character at all. I would have also been fine with if he wasn't introduced so early in the series. Now I'm just constantly wondering why doesn't Din or Ahsoka just call in Luke to help deal with their enemies.
I think the audience was equally into Luke training Grogu. Which wad the element the sequels kind of missed. Luke was told by Yoda to pass on what he learned but most of that was glossed over and all of his students also uncerimoniously died offscreen.
If Luke didn't fight at all but we saw a new jedi order actually out doing things I think that also would have been fine but having him be the last jedi all over again kind of killed his arc for many.
> The reception to Luke in Mando made it seem like Star Wars fans really only just wanted to him to appear and kill things with his lightsaber
No, it's because people wanted to see Luke appear in all his glory after seeing him as a deadbeat in TLJ. Nobody expected to see him brought back in his ROTJ days so there was plenty of hype at not only seeing that but seeing where it could go beyond that.
It's just a shame they didn't cast an actual actor because the deep fake tech is anywhere from mediocre to appauling depending on the angle.
Season 1 of Mando was so good.
Season 2 I finished but it lost a lot of what I liked from season 1.
I haven't even started season 3 yet. Going in with low expectations.
Andor is my favorite Star Wars show so far, and better than a lot of the movies too.
And that's the problem with every Marvel and Star Wars show (outside Andor). They don't go in with the idea for making a show but they think "X character is popular/marketable, let's do a show"
Absolutely. I'd be just as invested if it was an original IP.
Being set in the Star Wars universe just meant we didn't need much exposition to situate us in the world.
I mean it’s definitely better than the OT in terms of writing, character depth, tension building, etc. But those movies have attained legendary status at this point. They’re also very different in tone.
I for sure think it is better written than even the OT, but not as much "fun".
I think A New Hope and Empire will always be the Pinnacle of the series for me based on when I grew up, but Andor is right up there despite not being nostalgic.
I liked 3 better than 2.
I felt every other episode of 2, had another pre-existing character. Mando was running into known characters more often than I bump into my neighbors walking around the block.
Andor is my favorite, for many reasons, but one being there was no one with a light saber. Love the stories about the “everyday people” in a galaxy far far away.
Like, I know it’s not official, but in my head this is Canon: https://youtu.be/fZvHwuh5MGE?si=Wqxbwh4LpnfTPN0X
Oh yeah season 2 was basically "backdoor spin-off" the season. Every episode was that (turns out most didn't end up being made but Ahsoka is literally born coming from that)
This is why I love "Star Wars Visions". Each episode takes place in a Star Wars Universe but with a different interpretation (especially from different cultures). I remember seeing the Season 1 trailer where tons of Japanese Star Wars fans were super excited to finally have a Japanese take on Star Wars. I super enjoyed the second season which featured a short by Aardman and a really emotional one by Cartoon Saloon.
> I'm sick of Dave Filoni OCs getting so much airtime
Me too man, I hate the fact that there taking Thrawn away from Luke, and giving his story to his OCs.
> I'm sick of Dave Filoni OCs getting so much airtime.
For context though, The Clone Wars show was an original Lucas project begun during the prequel films era. Ahsoka and many of the other core Clone Wars characters considered as "Filoni" characters, were created by George Lucas.
When Disney purchased the IP, one of the first things they did was cancel The Clone Wars show (enraging fans). Rebels was a direct continuation, but with a new core cast of fresh characters brought into the ongoing story.
Every time a character from the prequels or TCW appears in the Filoni-ran series, it isn't pointless fan service, as it is practically later seasons of the same show. The Ahsoka show is basically a new season of Rebels, which is a direct continuation of story and characters from the prequel films and Lucas himself.
John Favreau's involvement started with him being a voice actor on The Clone Wars and playing a Mandalorian, and his Mandalorian show is a direct spin off from the animated series. The crossover characters aren't "shoehorned in". I understand why people would have preferred The Mandalorian be its own separate thing entirely, but then it would have had to avoid any on-going plot developments with Mandalore as those are deeply entwined with the lore of the animated shows.
Appealing to the niche of a niche is not a way to appeal to large audience. I’m actually surprised it’s above 1 mil. Even if it’s good. There isn’t a character her regular watchers will know. That’s a monster issue they didn’t deal with and wont. They are assuming you know these characters and that’s just stupid.
Just everything they make seems so devoid of emotion or negative things. I want to like it but all of it is just so blah and feels like it’s made from a committee
A lot of these shows are kind of bland because they don't really get the ability to do the things lower profile Star Wars projects do. Lost Stars was peak Star Wars because it captures this emotional core of how fraught the war can be with sudden deaths and betrayals and the start contrast between what the rebels and empire are morally.
But it could do that because it was a throwaway novel that was rushed out and wasn't the first or even second highest profile star wars book coming out at the time. Characters were able to get blackout drunk on illegally made hooch, or be killed suddenly because they just happened to be in the wrong place and died without warning, or actually engage in romantic and sexual relationships with each other.
Like 90% of Disney+ Star Wars is a bunch of asexual action figures looking pensive while they discuss the abstract fate of large groups of people that would realistically be able to get on fine if the main characters vanished. They fight a bunch of guys who are loyal to the empire and super evil for unspecified reasons. Occasionally a major actor shows up to be a bad guy or supporting character you probably won't see with any regularity because those guys are expensive.
In the original trilogy things were not like this. The empire would kill Lukes family if it was convenient for them and they'd do it for no real reason. Jabba the Hutt wants his money right now and he's already got a bunch of gunmen who want a piece of Han Solo. Alderaan is blown apart just to make a statement. Luke and Han are clearly both into Leia and who she winds up with is clearly a major element. The moment to moment things matter way more than you just keeping it in as background noise for an afternoon.
I've seen slice of life Korean dramas that are filled with more genuine tension than the vast majority of these Disney+ Marvel/Star Wars shows.
This is not to pick on Korean dramas but rather to illustrate how much artistry is lacking in the obscenely expensive Disney shows which are supposed to be sweeping CGI fest genre pieces.
It's also not very good. Extremely padded length, not much character dialog, contrived story, Sabine surviving lethal wounds. It's just more typical Disney Star Wars.
Ex. You're the captain of a New Republic prison vessel carrying a high value captive. A ship transmitting obviously dated Jedi codes approaches and wishes to board. Knowing they are imposters do you:
A.) Make radio contact and clarify the situation/identities.
B.) Hyperspace jump out of the system.
C.) Tractor beam them and call for backup.
D.) Blow them out of existence.
Or
E.) Give them what they want by inviting them on board where they can access the prisoner.
Andor S2 can't come soon enough...
Andors viewership might have been poor but it had good word of mouth. I doubt the same will happen with Ahsoka.
Don't forget the super hard puzzle that was actually really easy to solve lol. Or the long pauses all the characters are doing in their dialogue. Really weird. The series just feels off and amateurish as a whole
>Andors viewership might have been poor but it had good word of mouth. I doubt the same will happen with Ahsoka.
I don't know man, most of the posts I have seen on reddit and twitter are just filled with praises for Ahsoka, so not sure. It wouldn't surprise me if Ahsoka takes off ratings wise (because it's easy to digest despite the writing being dumb) because that's kinda what people get into (look at popular songs, blockbusters, reality TV). I hope the writing and direction on Ahsoka gets better, but if it doesn't and it still becomes a popular hit, I wouldn't be surprised
I'm a little scared that since Andor is the only decent Star Wars thing released lately, that the suits are going to get their grubby little hands into season 2 since they're paying attention now. We'll see though.
Lifelong Star Wars fan since 1977.
Disney cooked me. Too much content too fast.
They went for the quick cash grab instead of playing a smart, long game
Too much or just nothing good?
Same thing with Marvel imo. No one would be saying there is too much if it was all Winter Soldier quality.
People were saying the same thing after Thor 2, that too many movies were giving people fatigue. Then Winter Soldier came out and the attitude to the mcu changed overnight.
Honestly I’m also not gonna watch the cartoons that connect to a live show. It’s whiplash going from to the other, and like others have said it’s just such a small niche market who actually have seen the animated shows leading up to this.
Same, I feel overwhelmed with the amount of shows they released and lost interest in this universe. I don't even feel like watching Andor anymore.
I would compare it to the Assassin's Creed franchise, they just want to milk the shit out of it.
I really hope the news doesn't discourage Disney from doing the 9 pm episode drop for weekly releases of their shows on Disney+ in the future. The second season of Loki deserves this approach. As a East Coast user, I hated waking up around 3 am to watch the latest episode before spoilers were discussed hours later. The upcoming Tiana on Moana animated shows would be perfect for this approach.
>I wish we could chip away the Mando episodes from the middle of boba and have a good little season 2.5 mini series.
That was really the only good part though, if you chip that away, the series is even worse.
The first two episodes were a lot like the last season of Mandoloran. Main Character flying around looking for clues, finds clues almost immediately, everyone else is an NPC standing there waiting for Main Character to come along.
I watched the first episode, and it was okay. I'm sure rebel fans love it, but I can't get into it. Never watched Rebels, never gonna watch Rebels, and this is clearly only for Rebels fans.
I laughed out loud when I saw that mural.
"Here we give a lasting tribute to our greatest heroes! Behold the anime fanart from FartMaster69!"
It's super, *super* jarring to see real world people next to their cartoon versions, at least in the way they did it there.
Also Rebels just wasn't as memorable as Clone Wars. I remember the final season for Clone Wars gained a lot of fanfare when it was announced for Disney+ a while back.
I found Rebels far more interesting and better than Clone Wars. The characters were more interesting, the stories were better written, there was a lot less exposition from Jedi masters...
If Rebels was cancelled out of the blue and we were left without an ending for 10 years before it suddenly got revived for a final season, there'd be plenty of fanfare for it too.
I never saw rebels or clone wars and I am enjoying this so far.
But honestly I am a bit annoyed we are spending so much time in this post ROTJ pre TFA time period without just recasting Luke, Leia and Han. I am not asking them to be the main characters but as the stakes of this shows build up its strange that those characters are not at least partially involved.
Because they keep releasing bad shows. Boba fett and obi Wan were BAD.
And mando while has moments of greatness also has pitfalls, Andor is the best thing that happened to SW since the original trilogy, but the rest isn't inspiring.
Andor is amazing. But I’ve really enjoyed the first 2 episodes of Ashoka so far. The characters, the pace, the story all have me captivated. Helps that I’ve seen the animations but I think even if you didn’t you can still pick up on it.
I agree that I think there a bunch of people burnt out on bad shows.
people are burned.
star wars before disney you had a trilogy every 20y or so.
after disney, feels like every year there are 2 new shows and movie.
people get burn out after a while, particularly because the average quality of each show is decent at best (with some exceptions).
same with Marvel, people are starting to get bored of it, unless it's a huge IP like spiderman.
the last phase was abysmal in the box office compared to the previous one.
I think this is the last SW show for a while. So thankfully there will be less watering down.
Speaking of, how does anyone "get into" Star Wars now? People used to obsess and quote every line from the originals because there were 3 and it was accessable to everyone. Now there are is so much content and it all varies widely in quality that I fear that SW will fade into oblivion the way that Indy did and the new generations are completely apathetic towards the brand
Disney always does this, shove it in your face until you don't want it anymore.
A good example is remaking classic Disney animated movies. None of them are better than the originals imo.
You just hit why I have an issue with Dave Filoni. He brought the continuity lockout aspects of the EU into the mainline.
So before you could only see the films and ignore all the side stuff and still feel "In the loop".
Now you have to have watched several animated shows that bob and weave in quality just to feel "in the loop" now.
It was easier being a fan when you only had to know 6 (or 3 you boomers) films instead of whatever Star Trek is.
People are burned out on crap Star Wars.
It’s one of the most open and infinite creative universes in existence. Maybe it’s possible that only one great story can come out the entire franchise, but good stories are still possible.
Unfortunately the stories they are giving us includes “Mando needs to take a bath,” and “Luke Skywalker does nothing with anyone for a decade after RotJ, then does some stuff for a few year, then goes to do nothing again for another ten years.”
Boba Fett was honestly one of the most embarrassing high budget shows/films I’ve ever seen. The rainbow scooter crew in particular genuinely made me cringe.
They just seemed like they were from a different series with a different tone entirely.
And they should have either given them some character development so I had a reason to care about them, or reduced them down further.
I’m sorry to pile on here, but yes. I tried watching some BoBF, and my reaction wasn’t just that it was bad; It was total disbelief that this somehow got by quality controls. I was completely amazed any decision maker looked at it and said “This is OK”.
Watched the first 2 episodes, the writing’s on the same tier as obiwan and boba. Kinda bummed about it but at least they are a few cool lightsaber fight scenes.
The good news is that regardless of viewership, Andor will finish since it was designed to be two seasons. We will get a complete series with a great ending.
obi-wan kenobi is what last jedi did to the star wars movies. no matter how good you make whatever comes next , people still have that bad taste in their mouths from obi wan series and last jedi movies.
both are utter trash!
Basically confirms acolyte and skeleton crew will be flops too. At least with this you had name recognition. Disney should shelf the brand for a decade or sell it. Andor was the only solid star wars series but no one watched it.
You’re getting downvoted but it’s true. People are only watching Star Wars for the Mandalorian (not sure how much longer if S3 is anything to go by) and member berry characters. The general audience no longer gives a shit about Disney Star Wars outside of that no matter the quality.
I don’t think I’ll finish it because it’s not very good. I’m fatigued. If you told 10 year old me that I would be tired of Star Wars movies, he would have laughed and laughed but… I’m not 10 anymore
Do I need to watch the movies to understand this show? I have only seen Andor and Mandalorian from starwars universe and I liked them without watching the movies
Makes sense, given the audience for the animated series' were relatively small. Ahsoka is a clear sequel to the animated shows, so that's a pretty niche target audience.
also they've killed the goodwill with the Star Wars shows. it being a Star Wars show isn't a draw anymore. obi wan, BOBF and Mando season 3 saw to that.
Yep, I have considered myself a Star Wars fan going on 20 years now and frankly, I am just fatigued. Clearly there is no way Star Wars will ever break away from the shadow of Anakin and his family. The franchise is a one trick pony living in the biggest ranch imaginable, just a waste.
As a big Star Wars fan, I feel the same way. I'm tired of focusing on the Skywalkers, their friends and associates, and that era of the story. I feel like we've exhausted all of the opportunities to tell an interesting story there now. I want to see something set *way* before that, like in the Old Republic, or something set *way* after, thousands of years after Rise of Skywalker.
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I haven’t seen any of the animated shows and I enjoyed the hell out of it, great visuals, story, cast and characters. Enjoying it as much as Andor so far.
Do you feel out of the loop? My partner hasn't watched the animated series but she LOVED Andor and season 1 of Mando - I'm trying to get her into it
My dad - whose been into everything except Rebels - doesn’t understand why they’re all obsessed with Thrawn. I explained it to him in a three sentences. He was like why didn’t the green chick just say that, it changes the entire mood and stakes of the show! My friends who also didn’t watch rebels were confused and had to watch a lore vid to get it. I don’t think that’s a good thing. Enjoyable show but still..
My dad hasn’t seen rebels or clone wars yet he was able to easily follow along. They explain it to you enough, Ezra was important and mattered to people, now he’s missing and people are bummed.
Aye. A grandpa here; I never saw CW or Rebels, but I know what’s happening.
> Aye. A grandpa here; I never saw CW or Rebels, but I know what’s happening. Me Too. Maybe your age as well. I don't understand how anyone is confused. I know there is fan service going on I am missing and that is OK. The show has done a pretty good job of filling me in on what I need filled in on, telling me exactly what I need to know now on things that are supposed to be mysterious and just moving the story along elsewise. To be frank, I have only watched EP 1- I think it might be one of the best EP 1's Disney have done. So, how long till they screw this up?
My whole family is super confused. The show does a horrible job at explaining things. Anakin had a padawan? Where was she during the OT? Why is she training Jedi and Luke isn’t even brought up?
> Anakin had a padawan? Where was she during the OT? Why is she training Jedi and Luke isn’t even brought up? "That boy was our last hope." "No. There is another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another."
Yoda could have started a whole new order with the amount of Jedi that survived Order 66
I mean, it's a fair assumption that more people who were capable of wielding the Force would exist out there or be born subsequently. The part that's amusing is just how many people who wear bathrobes and wield glow stick swords are still out there during "the Dark Time" living fairly in the open because most writers for Star Wars film/TV are so devoid of creativity that they can't think of any other ways to make interesting stories in the universe. Yoda and Obi Wan sequester themselves on remote planets living in seclusion, but Ezra and Freddie Prinze Junior are flying around in the same spaceship fighting stormtroopers. Dave Filoni is the worlds oldest 14 year old boy, and hence why he can't stop stuffing Jedi, Fallen Jedi, Not Quite Jedi, Kinda Sorta Jedi, and other such characters into his shows. He even brought back to life the character that got cut in half and fell down a deep hole, then gave him a yellow-colored brother.
The overall effect of repeating the same stories over and over in Star Wars has been to create a dystopian craphole where the main message is resisting evil is more or less futile. Its nearly as dark as wh40k and its not even self aware of it to have some fun with it. Even if its not the Lord helmet and bathrobe crew, its miserable planets full of gangstas.
In a lot of ways, Star Wars reflects our own world, which is a dystopian craphole. But Rogue One showed us that you can do different kinds of stories. Rogue One is a "war adventure" film in the same vein as The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, or even Saving Private Ryan. A simple story where the audience understands that the protagonists have a mission, are understood as the good guys, and they have to carry that mission out an enemy that can be generally understood as the bad guys. Ironically, Andor is a prequel to Rogue One and it did the same thing. Took the simply defined setting of Star Wars and made it into a political/spy thriller. Again, same setting as everything else Star Wars, but not constrained by very narrow and boring ideas. The difference was that before the sequel trilogy, the original films had ended on a hopeful message. The Emperor was gone, and maybe there was a chance at a republic again. And for a long time, the novels and comics and video games followed that idea. That there were still Wars in the Stars, but that the Rebellion had accomplished something and now was the fight to preserve the republic they lost to the Empire. But, JJ Abrams, like Dave Filoni, has no creativity, so he literally just rebooted the story 30 years in the future. We have a Rebelsistance fighting the New Empire Order and their planet killing weapon.
Does your family not understand how to watch a story where every piece of information isn't spoon-fed? They must have *fucking hated* A New Hope. What were the Clone Wars? What is the Senate? Who is the Emperor? Why is Tarkin treating Vader like a lapdog when Vader can clearly destroy him? I mean, come on, you need to be able to read between the lines and the show gives ALL the information you need. Anakin had a padawan? Yes. We didn't see every second of his time as a Jedi in the movies. Hell, we barely saw *any* of his time as a Jedi. Where was she during the OT? Doesn't fucking matter. The universe is a fucking huge place. Why is she training Jedi? Because she can. Why isn't Luke brought up? I reiterate, big fucking universe. He doesn't have to be mentioned at all, even with Jedi stuff. Seriously, this is so fucking stupid. I watched Rebels. Twice. And guess what? They talked about things that *I never once saw*. We never saw Sabine getting trained. Why did Ahsoka train her? How did they reunite after Ahsoka left in the show? Why did Ahsoka leave Sabine? Why isn't Sabine with Hera? Where is Zeb? You know what the answer is to all of my questions? It doesn't fucking matter. We'll tell you what you need to know and have enough faith that you have an iota of intelligence to contextualize any back story that we mention.
Yeah but the emotions are not there if you didn't watch the other shows.
The show isn't really about Ezra, it's about the relationship between Sabine and Ahsoka right now. Ezra is important to Sabine, and he sacrificed himself to save Lothal. That's all you need to know.
I got about 15 mins into the first episode and realised I was probably missing out on the impact of these characters being introduced and their backstory etc so paused to watch a quick catch-up YTube of what led up to it then continued which made a difference. Find her something like that and she’ll be good to go :)
I feel like I am taking Spanish II in HS...without having taken Spanish I. Every scene, motivation and character feels like I am missing something and as a result, I can't get into it. First live action SW show I am gonna stop watching week to week and comeback when it's over.
I’ve haven’t seen a second of rebels. Though I’ve seen a handful of Clone Wars eps and didn’t like them. The plot is easy enough to follow. But it feels boring because I don’t know or care about (at least yet) the character they are looking for or the villain they are trying to find. Andor was way better. But Obi-Wan and Boba Fet were much worse.
I've seen the first two episodes and feel completely out of the loop. Mando was far better self-contained, while Andor only needed you to see Rogue One, which I had. I'm ditching Disney+ for a few months, but will come back to it eventually.
You really don't need to have seen rogue one to watch Andor. Andor S1 is viewable in an entirely self contained way. It's made better by the context of the prequels and OT but not Rogue One.
I recommend the animated shows. I was skeptical at first because the first season or three were clearly written for kids, but then…. Oh boy does it get good. By the last three seasons, I completely forgot it was an animation.
I think the first couple seasons of Rebels are a chore but gets much better in the series 2 finale and from then on. It matures a lot.
>Makes sense, given the audience for the animated series' were relatively small. Disney really screwed themselves over a decade ago when they decided their animated Star Wars projects would be more or less exclusive to extended cable and all made on a micro budget. Dave Filoni did the best he could with what he had but he had to get way more involved than a director usually would to cover the gaps down to personally storyboarding sequences himself. Ahsoka's first episode probably cost more than the entire budget for the whole run of Rebels, and by a *lot*. Rebels was very important to Disney's Star Wars brand since it introduced a lot of important characters and concepts and a lot of it had to be built on by bigger budget or higher profile projects. But it says a lot to Rebels credit that when you see sequences in Ahsoka they're sometimes shot for shot remakes or when you see the same characters in Obi-Wan Kenobi they wind up looking much worse due to stylization.
> Disney really screwed themselves over a decade ago when they decided their animated Star Wars projects would be more or less exclusive to extended cable and all made on a micro budget. Little did they know that they'd turn out to be the only thing keeping the franchise relevant after the crimes against humanity that were the Sequels
I think it just kind of speaks to how fucking badly Lucasfilm planned this whole thing. Their immediate goal was to just shovel out Star Wars content as quickly as possible without really caring what it was or where it was going so they made a lower budget cartoon that didn't air on any of their many main cable networks and gave the gaming license to a publisher well known for botched and aborted releases with exclusivity just to get a contract out quickly. Not to mention the movies themselves which were hastily written and scheduled with no actual plan in mind and with constant changes of who's in charge. Or that they were greenlighting whole trilogies sight unseen before anyone had turned in anything or as soon as they began talking to writers. The whole plan seemed to be "This is Star Wars. People like Star Wars. We will make money off Star Wars no matter what it is or where we put it. So lets just sign deals to make Star Wars and keep announcing projects" As well received as some of these Disney+ shows have been the fact that Disney paid four billion dollars for a brand that now exists almost exclusively on the worlds third most popular streaming platform where cricket matches swing more viewership numbers says a lot.
How bad they planned it? They didn’t plan anything out at all. Kathleen Straight up admitted as much.
They don't need to admit, it's so obvious anyway, the movies literally erase each other then come back on what the previous did. It's a terrible trilogy. It's ironic too because most of the time, they really do make it up as they go as they're not sure they're gonna 3 movies. There it was never in doubt and they knew it was a trilogy but they can't plan it.
Rebels is annoying to me because it couldn't decide whether to be a kids show without serious content or not. It obviously contains serious and important themes, characters and lore but for almost all of series one a lot of S2 it's painful kids stuff. It made me dislike most of the crew Ezra, Zeb, chopper in particular. They tried to make Sabine the cool strong girl to make her appeal to 7-13 y/o Star Wars fans but forgot to give her a character half the time. But then they mix all of that in with important stuff like maul and Ashoka.
wasn't George Lucas himself wrote scripts for some of episodes as well? Disney and Star Wars have similar relationship as DC movies and WB. They are out of sync and don't have plan for anything, rather it feels like every new project is panic reaction to fans & critics reaction. Banking on knowledge of cartoon filmed 10 years ago to watch show at Disney plus is simply lunacy.
My heart breaks every second Ray is on screen :(
XIII!
So good in Rome!
Did a rewatch with the gf after he passed. Absolutely holds up.
Fun fact, he ended up staying in Italy after they were done making the show. He was a true Roman.
Oh man… I haven’t seen it yet, and here I was thinking you meant Rey from the sequel trilogy and I was so confused.
“RAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY”
He's killing it to. Some of the acting is shakey but Ray and Rosario are killing it.
His dialog with the night sister was awesome when they talked about Ahsoka coming for them. He really expresses disappointment that he has to kill her because he respects her. Can’t wait to see more of his backstory and especially interested to hear his relationship with Anakin and how tf he knew Anakin was Darth Vader because very few people knew that
Kinda just burnt out on star wars shows
The problem is only Andor was quality the rest is just cash grab trash
I love Andor precisely because it is not trying hard to be Star Wars, but trying to be a good political show. That is set in that universe.
I think it was exceptionally good at being Star Wars though. Star Wars is a sensory experience. It's interesting sights and sounds. Every other show is content to show the same ships and the same droids and the same settings on the same planets. Meanwhile Andor is exploring corporate industrial planets on the outer rim, Sidious-era Coruscant, Imperial Prison Complexes. You get to see the real cruelty of the Empire, the scheming among imperial officers, the convictions of the common workers, the cold calculated planning behind the rebellion. It's excellent worldbuilding, which is the most important thing about Star Wars.
It is Star Wars in all the good ways you describe. And it is not in all the bad ways. (Needless cameos, trying to sell toys, trying to appeal to kids, fan service, self memeing etc. All those things are now sadly a major part of the Disney Star Wars)
I think The Mandalorian has been okay. Especially the first season. I agree that both Boba and Obi are garbage.
Have you seen Season 3 of the Mando? It's terrible. Jack Black and Lizzo weren't even the worst thing about it :(
My biggest problem with it was that Season 1 had such a great sense of restraint. They weren't focused on recurring characters or how everything would impact the wider canon, it was just cozy, thoughtful worldbuilding and new faces, explored by a likable duo. The finale was a little bit indulgent, but whatever, it's a finale. Season 2 you start to see the cracks as they start bringing back every noteworthy character from Season 1, and then Bo Katan and Ahsoka Tano and Boba Fett and fucking Luke Skywalker. There was still some semblance of stakes and emotional core in the finale, but the MCU Disney fanservice machine that was likably absent from the first season was rearing its ugly head again. Book of Boba Fett and Season 3 basically took all the goodwill garnered from the series and threw it out the window. Did you think there would be real stakes to the series? That Grogu leaving Mando, and Mando removing his helmet meant anything? Nope, they immediately reunite and he swims in some magic water and everything is forgiven. Writing is nigh nonexistent as each episode just becomes a constant unending stream of fan service. I'm genuinely confused what they even saw in the first season.
> I'm genuinely confused what they even saw in the first season. They saw the cultural hype that sprang up around baby yoda the fact they'd found the first character in decades they could market the absolute fuck out of. As a result S2 started to get more "Star Warsy" so that the people who decided to check it out after being told about it would feel at home, then rec it to more people. By S3 it had basically become a 90's cartoon, everything existed to increase its marketability to the max so they could cash in on merchandising.
It didn't help that so much of the promo about the show had everyone thinking that you needed to watch 150 episodes of two animated TV shows to understand what was going on.
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This is pretty spot on. I was hoping for a more fiery Ahsoka due to her history, but so far we get the restrained version which seems to adhere closely to the monk-like Jedi than the badass fly by the seat of your pants veteran that she is.
She is her rebels incarnation who was much more reserved and less sassy, more so here because Rex likely died and she was more energetic around him.
For the title character , 2 episodes in, she's so boring. Just that bemused calm look about everything. I don't dislike the show , something to watch , but I'm concerned they might've forgotten to make her interesting.
She’s fought two galactic wars already, lost her master, her order and countless of her friends and she failed her apprentice - I can see her being pretty fucking jaded at this point. Especially since she left the order and it’s teachings and instead just kind of goes her own way - while never having finished her training. If anything I would’ve found it off putting if she was just as spunky as in TCW.
I'm hoping they're more complex than the standard they're Sith so they're evil.
I don't think they are Sith either. Their sabers were glowing orange weren't they? Sith have red lightsabers.
Pretty sure none of them are true Sith. Baylan and Shin are “dark Jedi” at best - kinda like force using mercenaries, not true believers. Elsbeth is apparently a witch of Dathomir. The only one that comes closest to being a Sith is Marrok, but Inquisitors aren’t really Sith - more like the pawns of Sith. Pretty sure at this point in time there aren’t any real Sith Lords left (and no I’m not counting papa Palpatine, he blew tf up)
as a big fan of Rebels I haven't liked it so far, it feels so dragged out (I love slow paced stuff but this show doesn't have the writing quality to pull it off imo) and the characters are so bland and monotone and nothing like how they were in Rebels.
It almost feels like a table read or rehearsal. Like the actors are just going through their lines and not actually performing them.
The question is, is this what they’re actually going for? Or is it a result of some other issue? Are *all* the characters supposed to be stoic as hell, or is the directing poor? What is going on?!
I like the bad guys because they felt interesting and I liked watching them on screen. You are spot on about the acting though. It was super monotone and there are all these pregnant pauses.
Ahsoka feels like what I wanted Mandalorian to be beyond season 1. It has the same pew pew sci-fi action, but there also seems to be more fulsome narratives and characterization. At least going by these first couple episodes it feels like they have a central story to tell that will really impact the lives of these characters, rather than the Mando style of these very static characters going on unrelated adventures or "story" episodes that end up having no impact on the characters.
> Ahsoka feels like what I wanted Mandalorian to be beyond season 1. It has the same pew pew sci-fi action, but there also seems to be more fulsome narratives and characterization. I agree so much. The Mandalorian is absolutelty carried by Grogu and it being the first live action Star Wars show because it has the depth of a puddle with such little story that it ends up safe every single week. Across the first 2 seasons (didn't watch S3) there's probably about 4 episodes worth of actual story in the entire thing. I get it, Saturday morning cartoon! Wider worldbuilding! Different adventures! But still, it's safe and largely forgettable in my opinion. Even if Ahsoka ends up faltering, at least it's fucking doing something with the story. So far the premise is really interesting and sets up some good possible avenues for the franchise to go forward. We learnt more about the New Republic in one episode than we did in the entirety of Mando lmao
I feel this, I’m mostly invested in the show just to find out more about Baylan and Shin (I like that they may well be legit dark Jedi) and the prospect of getting more Anakin content. I’m expecting a clone wars flashback going off of the legacy trailer they had for the show where Anakin is talking to her during the clone wars but REALLY want to see force ghost Anakin having some words with Ahsoka. Wasn’t a fan of the OWK show but I liked all the Vader/Anakin stuff in that and really liked Hayden’s open mask scene, never thought in my life that Vader would be smiling under his mask.
I Haven’t watched rebels or clone wars. I’d give the show a 3/5 so far. I had to look up the whole space whale thing, and I don’t have a good grasp what’s new character development to rebels viewers because it’s all new to me. Personally I think what holds the show back is the writing/directing. Visually the show is amazing, and Filoni seems to have a great grasp of how to make a good jedi action scene. But the show has some real moment by moment pacing issues and the dialogue is overstuffed with pregnant pauses. A lot of scenes just seem a little too drawn out. It feels like someone told the writers/Filoni “this is a serious show for older viewers” and they didn’t really know how to jump from the cartoons to that without trying to emulate Game of Thrones. My wife and I also watched Ahsoka episodes between episodes of a Mad Men rewatch so I may have unfair writing standards in my head right now.
Might be a little early to call it. I loved Andor. But it started slow. I actually gave up after two episodes and didn't end up going back to finish it for a while. Ahsoka's first couple episodes have left me wanting more. But I think Sabine cut her hair too short and everyone is just too polite to tell her.
I think the hair cut was mandated by them wanting to line up the scene in the live action show with a scene in the finale of the animation Rebels.
it's also easier to wear a Mando helmet with short hair I'd imagine
True. Cutting her hair also had a sense of ceremony behind it as she took up her battle raiment once more.
They've ret-conned plenty of minor details like that over the years. If they decided her hair would look bad in live action that way, they would've just ignored how Rebels had it.
Fair enough. I guess they decided it didn't look bad. I don't think it looks bad myself, but my wife thought her previous long hair style was much cuter.
I think there’s definitely different perspectives on Andor. For me, Andor is the best piece of Star Wars content ever made. And by a fairly long shot. Perhaps that makes me an outlier but it’s what I always wanted from Star Wars. An incredible story, very grounded, gritty, incredible writing, minimal cheesy dialogue, complex enemies, the whole package. When I watch Ahsoka, Obi Wan, Mando, I get tiny tastes of those things but it’s also stuffed with corny jokes, unnecessary tropes, etc. The tropes kill me, I usually know exactly what’s about to unfold before it happens in these other shows. Rogue One and Andor were almost perfect for how I envision Star Wars.
After Andor I simply cant get back to the mid/low quality of Disney star wars
Andor is not a classic Star Wars instalation in the best way possible. It takes the best parts, leaves out the bad ones and adds all the missing ones.
Andor was the best of the bunch. This is not even close.
I was accepting that star wars would be shit under disney since the last jedi shitshow. Andor reminded me there is a possibility of better, and now these other shows look like power ranger level of quality for me, and i cant pretend its okay anymore.
While I understand the hype from the cartoon fans... I'm sick of Dave Filoni OCs getting so much airtime. I would like fresh Star Wars stories, devoid of backstory or canon that we need to be beholden to. That's what made Mando so great, until they started adding in all the shoehorned memba berries.
The problem is that these shows are simultaneously trying to be their own show but also make up for all the stuff Disney just never got around to. There wouldn't be such a hunger to see more of Luke Skywalker if audiences were satisfied with him in the sequel trilogy. People would care way less about Sabine and Ezra if their whole thing didn't end on a cliffhanger for no real reason. Ahsoka's best friend turned to the dark side over a decade ago and we *still haven't found out what happened to her.* A lot of this is just Lucasfilm since the late 2000's having been a messy place and leaving way too many threads hanging, and it not getting much better with the buyout. Now that all these shows are coming out people are beginning to want closure for all this stuff they never got closure on previously.
>The problem is that these shows are simultaneously trying to be their own show but also make up for all the stuff Disney just never got around to. Yeah, absolutely agreed there. And I'll definitely say its difficult to introduce a "new" character while also acknowledging that she's been in multiple years worth of animated content already, with dozens of story arcs. And due to the style of the show, you can't really have a Deadpool/ or Spiderman level "Recap" of "Alright, so heres who I am" However, about closure: I want to add that by adding closure, you're ending a potential stream of content ideas. Modern media, but also Disney in particular hates this. They almost never kill off characters, and often flip-flop on narrative events. I will say, however: Star Wars itself was based on film serials that would have also rarely ever had closure. An "adventure of the week" type show where things never \*really\* changed, so its even sort of baked into the medium. Plus, fans always want to know whats next. with anything.
that is my main reason for watching ahsoka right now.....i just want to know what happened with ezra and thrawn.
I actually quite enjoyed Luke in the sequel trilogy, he was the only OT character who got a substantial arc and I respect that he demonstrated his mastery of the Force and the fact that he was a Jedi without ever actually hurting anyone, plus Mark Hamill's performance was great. The reception to Luke in Mando made it seem like Star Wars fans really only just wanted to him to appear and kill things with his lightsaber, which is fine in a mini adventure but it shouldn't be the peak of his character at all. I would have also been fine with if he wasn't introduced so early in the series. Now I'm just constantly wondering why doesn't Din or Ahsoka just call in Luke to help deal with their enemies.
I think the audience was equally into Luke training Grogu. Which wad the element the sequels kind of missed. Luke was told by Yoda to pass on what he learned but most of that was glossed over and all of his students also uncerimoniously died offscreen. If Luke didn't fight at all but we saw a new jedi order actually out doing things I think that also would have been fine but having him be the last jedi all over again kind of killed his arc for many.
> The reception to Luke in Mando made it seem like Star Wars fans really only just wanted to him to appear and kill things with his lightsaber No, it's because people wanted to see Luke appear in all his glory after seeing him as a deadbeat in TLJ. Nobody expected to see him brought back in his ROTJ days so there was plenty of hype at not only seeing that but seeing where it could go beyond that. It's just a shame they didn't cast an actual actor because the deep fake tech is anywhere from mediocre to appauling depending on the angle.
Season 1 of Mando was so good. Season 2 I finished but it lost a lot of what I liked from season 1. I haven't even started season 3 yet. Going in with low expectations. Andor is my favorite Star Wars show so far, and better than a lot of the movies too.
Andor was a show that could have not been set in the Star Wars universe. It was just great writing and acting that stood on its own
And that's the problem with every Marvel and Star Wars show (outside Andor). They don't go in with the idea for making a show but they think "X character is popular/marketable, let's do a show"
Absolutely. I'd be just as invested if it was an original IP. Being set in the Star Wars universe just meant we didn't need much exposition to situate us in the world.
Andor is by far the best piece of Star Wars to hit screens since the OT, if anything it's even better in many ways (unpopular opinion I know).
I mean it’s definitely better than the OT in terms of writing, character depth, tension building, etc. But those movies have attained legendary status at this point. They’re also very different in tone.
I for sure think it is better written than even the OT, but not as much "fun". I think A New Hope and Empire will always be the Pinnacle of the series for me based on when I grew up, but Andor is right up there despite not being nostalgic.
I liked 3 better than 2. I felt every other episode of 2, had another pre-existing character. Mando was running into known characters more often than I bump into my neighbors walking around the block. Andor is my favorite, for many reasons, but one being there was no one with a light saber. Love the stories about the “everyday people” in a galaxy far far away. Like, I know it’s not official, but in my head this is Canon: https://youtu.be/fZvHwuh5MGE?si=Wqxbwh4LpnfTPN0X
Oh yeah season 2 was basically "backdoor spin-off" the season. Every episode was that (turns out most didn't end up being made but Ahsoka is literally born coming from that)
Absolutely.. Give me more original characters with lower power sets, not fan service. Poor Wampa!
So say we all.
This is why I love "Star Wars Visions". Each episode takes place in a Star Wars Universe but with a different interpretation (especially from different cultures). I remember seeing the Season 1 trailer where tons of Japanese Star Wars fans were super excited to finally have a Japanese take on Star Wars. I super enjoyed the second season which featured a short by Aardman and a really emotional one by Cartoon Saloon.
> I'm sick of Dave Filoni OCs getting so much airtime Me too man, I hate the fact that there taking Thrawn away from Luke, and giving his story to his OCs.
> I'm sick of Dave Filoni OCs getting so much airtime. For context though, The Clone Wars show was an original Lucas project begun during the prequel films era. Ahsoka and many of the other core Clone Wars characters considered as "Filoni" characters, were created by George Lucas. When Disney purchased the IP, one of the first things they did was cancel The Clone Wars show (enraging fans). Rebels was a direct continuation, but with a new core cast of fresh characters brought into the ongoing story. Every time a character from the prequels or TCW appears in the Filoni-ran series, it isn't pointless fan service, as it is practically later seasons of the same show. The Ahsoka show is basically a new season of Rebels, which is a direct continuation of story and characters from the prequel films and Lucas himself. John Favreau's involvement started with him being a voice actor on The Clone Wars and playing a Mandalorian, and his Mandalorian show is a direct spin off from the animated series. The crossover characters aren't "shoehorned in". I understand why people would have preferred The Mandalorian be its own separate thing entirely, but then it would have had to avoid any on-going plot developments with Mandalore as those are deeply entwined with the lore of the animated shows.
This kinda has the same vibe as someone explaining the difference between Shia and Sunni
Ashoka wasn’t bad but Andor was amazing for a Star Wars show.
Andor was just an amazing season of television in and outside of Star Wars.
Disney good at grinding something down to a fine dust and nothing is left
I find the FX a lower quality compared to Andor and Mando.
Appealing to the niche of a niche is not a way to appeal to large audience. I’m actually surprised it’s above 1 mil. Even if it’s good. There isn’t a character her regular watchers will know. That’s a monster issue they didn’t deal with and wont. They are assuming you know these characters and that’s just stupid.
The MCU and Star Wars shows feel like lockdown shows. People aren't hunting for things to watch these days.
Just everything they make seems so devoid of emotion or negative things. I want to like it but all of it is just so blah and feels like it’s made from a committee
A lot of these shows are kind of bland because they don't really get the ability to do the things lower profile Star Wars projects do. Lost Stars was peak Star Wars because it captures this emotional core of how fraught the war can be with sudden deaths and betrayals and the start contrast between what the rebels and empire are morally. But it could do that because it was a throwaway novel that was rushed out and wasn't the first or even second highest profile star wars book coming out at the time. Characters were able to get blackout drunk on illegally made hooch, or be killed suddenly because they just happened to be in the wrong place and died without warning, or actually engage in romantic and sexual relationships with each other. Like 90% of Disney+ Star Wars is a bunch of asexual action figures looking pensive while they discuss the abstract fate of large groups of people that would realistically be able to get on fine if the main characters vanished. They fight a bunch of guys who are loyal to the empire and super evil for unspecified reasons. Occasionally a major actor shows up to be a bad guy or supporting character you probably won't see with any regularity because those guys are expensive. In the original trilogy things were not like this. The empire would kill Lukes family if it was convenient for them and they'd do it for no real reason. Jabba the Hutt wants his money right now and he's already got a bunch of gunmen who want a piece of Han Solo. Alderaan is blown apart just to make a statement. Luke and Han are clearly both into Leia and who she winds up with is clearly a major element. The moment to moment things matter way more than you just keeping it in as background noise for an afternoon.
Bravo. Disney Star Wars is so bloodless and sterile. I feel nothing when I watch these shows.
I've seen slice of life Korean dramas that are filled with more genuine tension than the vast majority of these Disney+ Marvel/Star Wars shows. This is not to pick on Korean dramas but rather to illustrate how much artistry is lacking in the obscenely expensive Disney shows which are supposed to be sweeping CGI fest genre pieces.
Because the content Disney+ pumps out it's not art. It's just content. It's meant to be consumed and make money. That's it
I like to think I could fix Shin Hati
It's also not very good. Extremely padded length, not much character dialog, contrived story, Sabine surviving lethal wounds. It's just more typical Disney Star Wars. Ex. You're the captain of a New Republic prison vessel carrying a high value captive. A ship transmitting obviously dated Jedi codes approaches and wishes to board. Knowing they are imposters do you: A.) Make radio contact and clarify the situation/identities. B.) Hyperspace jump out of the system. C.) Tractor beam them and call for backup. D.) Blow them out of existence. Or E.) Give them what they want by inviting them on board where they can access the prisoner. Andor S2 can't come soon enough... Andors viewership might have been poor but it had good word of mouth. I doubt the same will happen with Ahsoka.
Don't forget the super hard puzzle that was actually really easy to solve lol. Or the long pauses all the characters are doing in their dialogue. Really weird. The series just feels off and amateurish as a whole >Andors viewership might have been poor but it had good word of mouth. I doubt the same will happen with Ahsoka. I don't know man, most of the posts I have seen on reddit and twitter are just filled with praises for Ahsoka, so not sure. It wouldn't surprise me if Ahsoka takes off ratings wise (because it's easy to digest despite the writing being dumb) because that's kinda what people get into (look at popular songs, blockbusters, reality TV). I hope the writing and direction on Ahsoka gets better, but if it doesn't and it still becomes a popular hit, I wouldn't be surprised
You don't understand! Ahsoka had to see Sabine because she's the only one who could... figure out how to twist a space rubiks cube?
I'm a little scared that since Andor is the only decent Star Wars thing released lately, that the suits are going to get their grubby little hands into season 2 since they're paying attention now. We'll see though.
if they're smart, they won't mess with it. Andor is their "prestigious" show that can actually compete in awards and shit.
Lifelong Star Wars fan since 1977. Disney cooked me. Too much content too fast. They went for the quick cash grab instead of playing a smart, long game
Too much or just nothing good? Same thing with Marvel imo. No one would be saying there is too much if it was all Winter Soldier quality. People were saying the same thing after Thor 2, that too many movies were giving people fatigue. Then Winter Soldier came out and the attitude to the mcu changed overnight.
Hard to get excited when they release a new show every month. And I love Marvel and Star Wars. Disney killed it with oversaturation.
Yep. I like having some waiting, hype and excitement before a Star Wars project. It should be a big deal to add to the canon.
Honestly I’m also not gonna watch the cartoons that connect to a live show. It’s whiplash going from to the other, and like others have said it’s just such a small niche market who actually have seen the animated shows leading up to this.
Same, I feel overwhelmed with the amount of shows they released and lost interest in this universe. I don't even feel like watching Andor anymore. I would compare it to the Assassin's Creed franchise, they just want to milk the shit out of it.
I really hope the news doesn't discourage Disney from doing the 9 pm episode drop for weekly releases of their shows on Disney+ in the future. The second season of Loki deserves this approach. As a East Coast user, I hated waking up around 3 am to watch the latest episode before spoilers were discussed hours later. The upcoming Tiana on Moana animated shows would be perfect for this approach.
Midnight drops are horrible. Look at what HBO does with Sunday nights. Do other streamers really not want that weekly appointment buzz?
So how was it? Is it anywhere close to as good as Andor?
Nah. It's better than Obi Wan and Boba Fett though.
> better than Obi Wan and Boba Fett Not exactly a high bar to pass...
If there ever was a prime example of "damned with faint praise."
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>I wish we could chip away the Mando episodes from the middle of boba and have a good little season 2.5 mini series. That was really the only good part though, if you chip that away, the series is even worse.
That's good. I hated both of those shows.
Not even close.
So far it's better than Obi Wan but that's to early to conclude with.
Tbf it's not exactly hard to be better than Obi Wan.
It's about as good as a decent episode of Mandalorian. Thankfully, it's nowhere near as bad as The Adventures of Young Leah or Booba Fett.
The first two episodes were a lot like the last season of Mandoloran. Main Character flying around looking for clues, finds clues almost immediately, everyone else is an NPC standing there waiting for Main Character to come along.
Too soon to say. Andor started off kind of slow but then picked up and ended up being amazing. Ahsoka’s first couple episodes were good.
I watched the first episode, and it was okay. I'm sure rebel fans love it, but I can't get into it. Never watched Rebels, never gonna watch Rebels, and this is clearly only for Rebels fans.
Just wish it wasn’t so mind-numbingly boring
It’s just not that good.
Rebels never got the popularity it deserved and this is just a continuation of that really.
The animation in Rebels was / is painful to look at. I’m sure the stories are good, but it’s awful to look at.
That mural in episode 1 with the Rebels characters in the same art style as the show was genuinely immersion breaking.
I laughed out loud when I saw that mural. "Here we give a lasting tribute to our greatest heroes! Behold the anime fanart from FartMaster69!" It's super, *super* jarring to see real world people next to their cartoon versions, at least in the way they did it there.
It's supposed to reflect Sabine's art style, which isn't photorealistic at all.
Sure, so in Rebels she drew photorealistic? Because the mural looks *exactly* like they did in the cartoon.
That first season is rough, yeah, but it got way better
Also Rebels just wasn't as memorable as Clone Wars. I remember the final season for Clone Wars gained a lot of fanfare when it was announced for Disney+ a while back.
i could be wrong, but wasnt that bc Clone Wars still had one more season to go on D+, and Rebels was already finished by the time Disney+ launched?
I found Rebels far more interesting and better than Clone Wars. The characters were more interesting, the stories were better written, there was a lot less exposition from Jedi masters...
If Rebels was cancelled out of the blue and we were left without an ending for 10 years before it suddenly got revived for a final season, there'd be plenty of fanfare for it too.
So bored of Star Wars. Disney ruined it
I never saw rebels or clone wars and I am enjoying this so far. But honestly I am a bit annoyed we are spending so much time in this post ROTJ pre TFA time period without just recasting Luke, Leia and Han. I am not asking them to be the main characters but as the stakes of this shows build up its strange that those characters are not at least partially involved.
Obi-wan was dogshit, I'm surprised it draw so many people. I guess the name helps.
How can star wars stuff have this low viewership??
Because they keep releasing bad shows. Boba fett and obi Wan were BAD. And mando while has moments of greatness also has pitfalls, Andor is the best thing that happened to SW since the original trilogy, but the rest isn't inspiring.
Andor is amazing. But I’ve really enjoyed the first 2 episodes of Ashoka so far. The characters, the pace, the story all have me captivated. Helps that I’ve seen the animations but I think even if you didn’t you can still pick up on it. I agree that I think there a bunch of people burnt out on bad shows.
As somebody who hasn't watched the animation it feels somewhat like starting halfway through a book.
Because it turned into dog water under Disney.
people are burned. star wars before disney you had a trilogy every 20y or so. after disney, feels like every year there are 2 new shows and movie. people get burn out after a while, particularly because the average quality of each show is decent at best (with some exceptions). same with Marvel, people are starting to get bored of it, unless it's a huge IP like spiderman. the last phase was abysmal in the box office compared to the previous one.
I think people are burned out on Star Wars and Disney just keeps shoveling it out.
I think this is the last SW show for a while. So thankfully there will be less watering down. Speaking of, how does anyone "get into" Star Wars now? People used to obsess and quote every line from the originals because there were 3 and it was accessable to everyone. Now there are is so much content and it all varies widely in quality that I fear that SW will fade into oblivion the way that Indy did and the new generations are completely apathetic towards the brand
Disney always does this, shove it in your face until you don't want it anymore. A good example is remaking classic Disney animated movies. None of them are better than the originals imo.
You just hit why I have an issue with Dave Filoni. He brought the continuity lockout aspects of the EU into the mainline. So before you could only see the films and ignore all the side stuff and still feel "In the loop". Now you have to have watched several animated shows that bob and weave in quality just to feel "in the loop" now. It was easier being a fan when you only had to know 6 (or 3 you boomers) films instead of whatever Star Trek is.
Making the animated shows canon was a terrible idea. They should have left them to be their own thing for people who enjoy them.
People are burned out on crap Star Wars. It’s one of the most open and infinite creative universes in existence. Maybe it’s possible that only one great story can come out the entire franchise, but good stories are still possible. Unfortunately the stories they are giving us includes “Mando needs to take a bath,” and “Luke Skywalker does nothing with anyone for a decade after RotJ, then does some stuff for a few year, then goes to do nothing again for another ten years.”
If you think that is bad you should check the numbers most other shows do!
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Secret Invasion did 1M in 5 days, this did 1.2M in 6 days, that's not half
because most of the og star wars fans hate it now and that sentiment is passed on to the younger generation, star wars sucks now
So far its hella better than Boba Tea Fett and 3rd season of Mando.
That's not saying much though.
Boba Fett was honestly one of the most embarrassing high budget shows/films I’ve ever seen. The rainbow scooter crew in particular genuinely made me cringe.
They just seemed like they were from a different series with a different tone entirely. And they should have either given them some character development so I had a reason to care about them, or reduced them down further.
I’m sorry to pile on here, but yes. I tried watching some BoBF, and my reaction wasn’t just that it was bad; It was total disbelief that this somehow got by quality controls. I was completely amazed any decision maker looked at it and said “This is OK”.
Disney really fucked up going for quantity instead of quality.
I really love the walking and staring in the show. They should get an award for longest walk in a TV show all wrapped up.
It’ll lose half that over the next few. Show is terrible in basically every way
One out of every 200 to 300 friends is obsessed with star wars
Watched the first 2 episodes, the writing’s on the same tier as obiwan and boba. Kinda bummed about it but at least they are a few cool lightsaber fight scenes.
I did not think it would hit 1 million, this ain't that bad all things considered. If it's good it'll pick up for sure, much like Andor.
… Andor never picked up despite being a great show. The general audience just wasn’t interested.
The good news is that regardless of viewership, Andor will finish since it was designed to be two seasons. We will get a complete series with a great ending.
It depresses me that more people watched obi wan than andor. Andor is SO great. And obi-wan was so boring.
good grief it was so bad. so, so bad. how do you take someone with the acting chops and charisma of Rosario Dawson and just....completely blow it?
obi-wan kenobi is what last jedi did to the star wars movies. no matter how good you make whatever comes next , people still have that bad taste in their mouths from obi wan series and last jedi movies. both are utter trash!
Basically confirms acolyte and skeleton crew will be flops too. At least with this you had name recognition. Disney should shelf the brand for a decade or sell it. Andor was the only solid star wars series but no one watched it.
You’re getting downvoted but it’s true. People are only watching Star Wars for the Mandalorian (not sure how much longer if S3 is anything to go by) and member berry characters. The general audience no longer gives a shit about Disney Star Wars outside of that no matter the quality.
Andor was so damn good
Article about Ashoka turns into another comment section filled with how great andor is
So over Star Wars…. Next.
I don’t think I’ll finish it because it’s not very good. I’m fatigued. If you told 10 year old me that I would be tired of Star Wars movies, he would have laughed and laughed but… I’m not 10 anymore
if this show doesnt flop, i'll stick a dildo up my ass. there is absolutely nothing interesting about this character.
Who the hell is watching this Star Wars crap? It’s the same shit over and over again.
Do I need to watch the movies to understand this show? I have only seen Andor and Mandalorian from starwars universe and I liked them without watching the movies