Physical media is on the move, as Andor: Season One and Obi-Wan Kenobi: The Complete Series (I guess there are no plans for a second season) are on their way at the end of April. StarWars.com has the skinny, including news of a Director’s Commentary for the Obi-Wan Kenobi finale. Three cheers! I love Director’s Commentary! Special Features were one of the best parts of the DVD and Blu-Ray boom before streaming reigned supreme.
This announcement has provided another opportunity for those who think Andor is the greatest Star Wars ever made, or something to that effect, to say it again as a chorus, and bless those who take that position. You do you. To me, Andor is an interesting what-if of a show, a kind of alternate reality where Star Wars is hard science fiction and not a space opera. It’s complex, well-acted, prestige television and there’s tons I loved about it. Still, I couldn’t help but bristle at its latent critique of Star Wars. (I also felt a deep love for Fiona Shaw.)
For me, though, Obi-Wan Kenobi was it. It’s the show that kicked of the existence of this-here-newsletter, and it was made with a real love of Star Wars as such. It looked phenomenal, it gave us a new John Williams theme, it added to the canon in a fun way, and it gave Ewan MacGregor an opportunity to be totally wonderful in the role, nearly twenty years after he left it behind. I can’t wait to put Obi-Wan Kenobi: The Complete Series in its place on my shelf.
For those who are new here and don’t like scrolling through the Archives, here’s my write up of the first two episodes of Obi-Wan entitled: The Last Jedi.
In other news, Star Tours at Disney will be updated with Ahsoka, Andor, and The Mandalorian material. Smart! There are Star Wars fans who have grown up with Disney+. To them, the original trilogy are more-or-less old movies, and these are the characters they paid to see. Even with the invention of Batuu, Star Tours is reliably cool, and I can’t wait to give it a whirl the next time I get the opportunity.
Still, I have to ask, what’s the Andor transmission going to be like? Is it just Luthen Rael looking at the camera, in deep pain, intoning, “Children! Welcome to Star Tours! I hope you and your family are having fun in this terrible regime! I’ve made my mind a sunless place.”
This is honestly the most accurate observation of Andor I’ve heard in some time: “This announcement has provided another opportunity for those who think Andor is the greatest Star Wars ever made, or something to that effect, to say it again as a chorus, and bless those who take that position.” Dozens of conversations with die-hard Andor-enthusiasts later … I’m still somewhat scratching my head as to why. Complex story line, macro-micro world building, deep characters are just a few of the reasons. I guess? 😂🤓
Even as a big Andor fan, that last paragraph gave me the best laugh of the day!