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“It's a period of civil war.” So started the opening ride of the first Star Wars film in 1977. Now on the return AndorWe see the bloody development of this conflict and its human costs. After several films and series that did not manage to add significantly to the saga, the showrunner Tony Gilroy proves that there is still a dramatic life in the franchise, even a new maturity.
It is not a universe of magic Jedis, Laser and Force Sabers-Bai. Fascism does not wear a mask of dread but a self-satisfied smile, powered by corruption and greed; The resistance is clandestine and mortally risky. The tone darkens far beyond everything Star Wars has already seen: in the world of ewoks and gungans come from drug abuse, adultery and sexual predation.
The echoes of our own reality hardly need to declare, but sometimes they are strange: at a conference of the Wannsee type, the hard imperial plotting the looting of a vulnerable planet for its rare and precious minerals – and not to mention life in danger. The dominant atmosphere is dark, paranoid, trembling.
There are a few evil. The joyful marrying the daughter of a 13 -year -old senator asked you: “A long ago in a galaxy far, far” means that the Alabama of the 1950s? From there, we jump awkwardly in Ibiza in the 1990s and a display of the arrow of mom and dad during a wedding party at a cheese house. Wasn't the Cantina group available? Worse still, the scene is difficult to be interspersed with an attempted rape in a distant farm.
But Andor Quickly refound his sole. The Gilroy plate deposits a dizzying number of lines, characters and places – too much to list here – like anti -fascist senators are displayed in sparkling skyscrapers and Grubby insurgents dull in muddy trenches. He even finds time for a suspicion of Oedipic sitcom while the imperial couple Yuppie Dedra (Denise Gough) and Syril (Kyle Soller) entertain his manipulative mother in their penthouse, Kathryn Hunter purring like a Kitt Eartha recently as a catastrophizing eedy. “You look at too many imperial news”, rumbles Syril with weariness.
The excellent casting is led by Diego Luna as a stoking heroic rebellious and Geneviève O'Reilly cassian, oozing the dignified dignity like my Mothma. They are joined by old familiar faces: Ben Mendelsohn, as a rumble and Sibilant Grandee Imperial, and Forest Whitaker, as a guerrilla leader with wild eyes, take their roles from the 2016 film of 2016 Snape Oneto which this series serves as a prequel.
But Andor Wisely never lights up in the lazy fans service that has evaluated so many other expensive outings since Disney took over. The fact that its second season will also be its last guarantees that, for once, the quality will prevail over the quantity. Andor is the most adult and satisfactory addition to Star Wars from the streaming era: a new hope.
★★★★ ☆
On Disney + now
