Andor

[Paul MacLean]

"The show is so good. So good! Like the dream come true of a Star Wars kid who grew up and wanted serious adult drama set in that world of 1977."

https://www.lukaskendall.com/post/the-fluke-of-andor

Lukas is my friend, I respect him and wouldn't bust on him.

But for me personally, I don't really want an innocent adventure movie I loved as a child to be repurposed as "edgy" and "provocative".

Imagine a new iteration of Land of the Lost which depicts Will venting his adolescent sexual frustration by coming onto Holly.

[AndyDursin]

I can tell you one thing, Andor is absolutely not having a 'cultural moment'. Maybe in the vacuum of Hollywood it is but Ive never run in a single soul whose watched it or cares. Even social media posts amongst people I follow are non existent.

[Monterey Jack]

I can tell you one thing, Andor is absolutely not having a 'cultural moment'. Maybe in the vacuum of Hollywood it is but Ive never run in a single soul whose watched it or cares. Even social media posts amongst people I follow are non existent.

It's the definition of a "Twitter Phenomena", where the social media circles rhapsodize about it (and call you a drooling moron if you raise any objections or dare to call it "boring"), but you look at the cold, hard ratings data, and it's obvious that the majority of people haven't watched it, and don't care to. This is the audience the forthcoming SW big-screen movies are going to cater to, not the wide swatch of moviegoers who just want unpretentious, swashbuckling fun but an increasingly insular, aging group of fanboys who only want Memberberry callbacks to deep-dish "lore" and a brooding, faux-"adult" seriousness where there are rape scenes and a character intoning, "Let's tear the sh!t out of this place". My challenge is...if Andor were stripped of its tenuous connection to Star Wars, and were put out as-is with no connection to that IP brand...would people be so bullish about it? Would they have even WATCHED it in the first place? Doubtful.

I just watched Godzilla Minus One again this morning, and that's how you update a beloved childhood franchise with an "adult" tone without sacrificing what was originally appealing about it, and doing so without it feeling ponderous or inserting sexual assault scenes and profanity to appease a rapidly-aging fanbase.

[Paul MacLean]

My challenge is...if Andor were stripped of its tenuous connection to Star Wars, and were put out as-is with no connection to that IP brand...would people be so bullish about it? Would they have even WATCHED it in the first place? Doubtful.

That's been my thought for a while now.

Any resemblance between these spinoffs and the Star Wars of George Lucas, is merely cosmetic -- spaceships, props, sets, uniforms. Replace all those with original designs and the fan(boy) base would not exist.

[Eric Paddon]

Imagine a new iteration of Land of the Lost which depicts Will venting his adolescent sexual frustration by coming onto Holly.

Or "Battlestar Galactica" with rapes and babies necks being snapped and constant hand jobs and gay marriages.

Oh wait a minute. We did get that.

[Monterey Jack]

Any resemblance between these spinoffs and the Star Wars of George Lucas, is merely cosmetic -- spaceships, props, sets, uniforms. Replace all those with original designs and the fan(boy) base would not exist.

This is always what I flash on when a good, original movie opens to crickets at the box office. Everyone always complains about there being too many sequels, prequels, remakes and reboots, and yet when something really good and truly original comes out, often times no one bothers to go. It's what's made the success of Sinners such a breath of fresh air...yeah, it's not gonna make a billion dollars and kick off forty years' worth of sequels and spin-offs (at least, I hope not), but it's slowly and surely surpassed $300 million worldwide on a $90 mil budget and has had some of the smallest week-to-week drops of any movie in recent memory (it's still gonna take in $15 mil this weekend). And it's GOOD, too, the rare modern movie that people have been excitedly discussing and recommending to friends and family (my oldest niece and her husband took in in a few weeks ago, even though they're not big "horror people"). If Ryan Coogler were smart, he'd simply walk away from the third Black Panther (why yoke himself to that rapidly sinking luxury liner?) and make another original. "From the director of Sinners" would be enough to guarantee an audience showing up by this point, they way Jordan Peele has made nothing but originals after the wild success of Get Out, and Christopher Nolan used a trilogy of Batman movies to make nothing but originals for the last 13 years. Who would have ever figured that a talky, three-hour drama about the creation of the Atomic Bomb would have made almost five times more than The Marvels, or Snow White? That's the model studios should be pursuing, giving talented, unique filmmakers the support they need to establish a fanbase who will show up for anything with their names on it, instead of blowing billions on trying to keep a foundering franchise like the MCU afloat for another decade instead of calling it a loss and moving onto something else.

[Paul MacLean]

If Ryan Coogler were smart, he'd simply walk away from the third Black Panther (why yoke himself to that rapidly sinking luxury liner?) and make another original. "From the director of Sinners" would be enough to guarantee an audience showing up by this point, they way Jordan Peele has made nothing but originals after the wild success of Get Out, and Christopher Nolan used a trilogy of Batman movies to make nothing but originals for the last 13 years.

Unfortunately for us, as the saying goes, "money talks". I'm sure its easier to go along with the big studios and keep directing "sure fire hits" -- which may or many not be "sure fire" hits, but are a safer bet than going out on a limb making something new and unique. Like studios, filmmakers can become risk averse too -- when they get used to a successful lifestyle, and box office figures start to matter more than critical acclaim.

I remember when David Lean received the AFI Life Achievement Award back in 1990 and recalled Noel Coward's advice to him -- "Always come out of another hole". He admonished Hollywood for not coming out of "any more new holes", and relying too much on sequels, warning that "we'll sink if we do", adding "and television's going to take over!"

Well, he wasn't wrong.