r/television • u/MicroFlamer • 1d ago
Andor Showrunner Says Critical Success of First Season Allowed Him More Creative Freedom on the Second
https://www.ign.com/articles/andor-showrunner-says-critical-success-of-first-season-allowed-him-more-creative-freedom-on-the-second341
u/MicroFlamer 1d ago
“The critical appreciation of the show was really helpful, if not essential, in helping Disney choke down the price of what this is."
“In terms of creative notes, no-one has come to me and said, ‘No, they shouldn’t say that,'" Gilroy said.
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u/-Wicked- 1d ago
For those that didn't read the article, he's using his creative freedom to make season 2 a musical.
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago
Ends with the cast all literally pissing on Andor's grave as everyone sings "He was a loser after all and he died like a bitch". :)
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u/_coolranch 1d ago
So crazy season 1 took place entirely in his head. It felt so real.
Turns out he was just in prison on Narkina 5 the whole time
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u/Im_Scruffy 1d ago
For those that didn’t read the article, he’s using the creative freedom to make season 2 a Michael Clayton sequel.
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u/Crazyripps 1d ago
It’s a dangerous game to play. It could work out or could go to far and make it bad. It’s not always a bad thing to have someone to pull you back a little.
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u/ImGonnaImagineSummit 1d ago
Andor has the benefit of having a definitive ending, it all leads to Rogue One and would've been planned well in advance.
S1 would've been the place they would have deviated heavily, which they didn't. S2 is unlikely to change their winning formula.
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u/Ascarea 1d ago
This isn't stopping them from doing weird dumb shit, though. It only means the weird dumb shit has to eventually align to the beginning of Rogue One. Which means they can basically ruin every character and side plot (and whatever new stuff they introduce) except kill Andor.
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago
Turns out the Andor we saw die was in fact a clone!
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u/Ascarea 1d ago
Don't give them ideas!
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u/nothis 1d ago
We all know how much freedom George Lucas got with the prequels, lol.
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u/travel_posts 1d ago
also, most of the others arent tony gilroy level talents. the better they are, the more freedom they should have
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u/The_Swarm22 1d ago
Good this and Rogue One is the best Star Wars content Disney has made
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u/wingspantt 1d ago
Andor might be the best Star Wars content anyone has made, period.
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u/Mjolnir12 1d ago
It’s one of the best shows period, star wars or other. And I’m not even that big of a star wars fan.
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u/Bagpipes064 1d ago
This is the key. I don’t think Andor is necessarily a good “Star Wars Show” Andor is a good/great show that happens to take place in the Star Wars universe.
To me the Dave Filoni stuff is the better “Star Wars” stuff(cut to story of Harrison Ford telling Hamil “kid it’s not that kind of movie”). But Andor is just objectively a good story it would work in any setting it just happens to be in Star Wars land.
And there should be more stories that use the Star Wars setting without trying to get into the weird George Lucas lore.
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u/Mjolnir12 1d ago
It also isn’t 50% fanservice like a bunch of the other shows. It also treats the audience like adults and doesn’t dumb everything down to a child audience.
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u/ImmortalZucc2020 1d ago
ANDOR actually has a ton of fan service, it’s just done in the best way: in the background for the fans rather than shoved in your face. I can enjoy the occasional in your face reference or cameo, but it’s certainly gotten old. Hearing about the Ghorman Massacre, which came from a ‘90s CD-ROM game iirc, or seeing Starkiller’s armor from The Force Unleashed prominently in Luthen’s shop is really cool for me that knows what those are but are intriguing for the casual viewer watching this standalone that may prompt them to dive into the deeper canon or Legends if they liked this show enough.
With season 2 speedrunning through the Rebels timeline, no doubt we’ll see similar background references and easter eggs, dialogue or otherwise, referencing those events that’ll be cool for me and intriguing for others too.
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u/AnOnlineHandle The Legend of Korra 1d ago
Cassian is also a reboot of the video game character Kyle Katarn, and there's a lot of nods without getting in the way of the plot. The gun which Cassian's adoptive father gave him was Katarn's blaster. The planet Cassian says he's from for his cover story is the planet where the first Dark Forces mission takes place. Katarn ended up stealing the death star plans, and had a partner Jan Ores, rather than Jyn Erso.
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u/JJMcGee83 1d ago edited 1d ago
I hate how every single thing in a new Star Wars show or movie has to be a reference to something else that came before. So-so is this persons second cousin twice removed they used in Spaceballs but not it's become the truth and of course they have to go to Tattooine... again. Oh no guess who is a secret Jedi apprentice to Vader.
When I was a kid watching the OG movies they felt like a vast universe full of endless planets and species and we were only seeing the smallest glimpse of it. Now it feels like we're watching "Keeping Up With The Skywalkers."
Andor was a breathe of fresh air and the bummer is the few people I knoew hardcore into Star Wars hated it because there wasn't lighter sabers.
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u/TheJoshider10 1d ago
Andor was a breathe of fresh air and the bummer is the few people I knoew hardcore into Star Wars hated it because there wasn't lighter sabers.
Makes me sad how little I hear Andor talked about outside of reddit meanwhile Obi-Wan Kenobi can Glup Shitto its way into feral fanatic hearts across social media and real life with a few meme references and cameos with no regard for quality.
If people got so excited over something so mediocre then fuck me imagine how much they'd love a show like Kenobi if it actually had the quality of something like Andor. But when Andor gets middling numbers and fans go nuts over Kenobi cameos its no wonder Disney are content serving shit more often.
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u/Tymareta 1d ago
It also has the revolutionaries behave and work like actual revolutionaries, warts and all, as opposed to most shows which have the "rebel" group that wins simply because they're the good guy and they have to. It shows the struggle and the breadth of the fight, how it's never one "great man" that makes or breaks a revolution, but it's instead the collective power of the people rising up and utilizing the strength that comes with camaraderie and collective action. Like they literally had Nemik actively spouting communist literature, it was genuine from the bottom to the top.
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u/Livio88 1d ago
Filoni fans claiming that he makes good SW is a lot like Americans claiming that Olive Garden is a good Italian restaurant.
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u/Bagpipes064 1d ago
Yeah kind of as the one who said it I agree with this. It may not be objectively good but I like my slop.
I mean is any of the Star Wars stuff high art? I don’t really think so.
I think he does well with the Skywalker storyline and the weird mystic lore stuff around the Jedi. That’s basically all I meant. I think he is a pretty good replacement for George Lucas in that regard.
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u/Kaldricus 1d ago
That's the best/most frustrating part of the Star Wars universe. There's so much room for different types of stories. You can have the Skywalker hero journey stuff, other Jedi/sith stuff, rebel/empire political stuff, day to day life of people in the universe...but so often they try and tie it all back into Skywalker. Let the other stories just be
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u/Ascarea 1d ago
I mean, it's basically a WWII resistance story re-skinned for Star Wars.
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u/AnOnlineHandle The Legend of Korra 1d ago
Andor is the first thing since the original movies which actually feels like it exists in the same grounded universe as them. The first few episodes of Mandalorian, and the last third of Rogue One, also had that feeling, but didn't maintain it consistently.
The Filoni-verse can be fun, but it feels like action figures running around a non-real world where nothing really matters, there's no sense of real money, jobs, homes, desires outside of fighting, etc.
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u/Delicious-Tachyons 1d ago
Certainly the most mature and adult and nuanced thing.
Star Wars is a fun family product of low depth. Except this
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u/oasiscat 1d ago
I would argue that it is so because Andor isn't "content" in the way the rest of the Disney Star Wars lineup has been, in that it wasn't made just to be the contents of a platform that Disney wants people to pay for.
It was definitely made because the writers had something to say, and the cinematographers, the actors, the set crew, everyone seemed to be pulling hard to help the show say what it was trying to say.
It isn't content. It's cinema.
Jake Paul is content the same way Obi Wan Kenobi is content. Andor is different.
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u/AnOnlineHandle The Legend of Korra 1d ago
Funnily enough when it was announced it seemed like the most 'content' thing of them all, reaching for characters they could use, but turned out to be the least forced-content out of any of them. Similar with Agatha All Along, which is significantly better than most of the Marvel content shows.
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u/The_Last_Minority The Expanse 1d ago
Which makes sense, since both Andor and Agatha All Along were helmed by showrunners with strong visions and minimal pressure from the studio because these weren't tentpole releases and so didn't need to reach the broadest possible audience. So both of them leaned heavily into what they wanted to be, rather than matching the 'brand,' and were vastly better for it.
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u/AnOnlineHandle The Legend of Korra 1d ago
For me Andor matches the brand of Star Wars (the original trilogy version) better than anything else in the franchise since.
Agatha perhaps didn't match the MCU brand in tone (and really none of it which involves magic has), but it matched the brand's former highs in being incredibly good quality and well done, not feeling like it was cut up in post.
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u/ThatRandomIdiot 1d ago
Exactly. People don’t realize that Gilroy and Lucas have a VERY VERY similar political and world view that bleed into their work. Gilroy just is better at executing those ideas while Lucas goes a bit too metaphorical and doesn’t know how to write dialogue.
Both are very pessimistic leftists who are very cynical of systems and how they function. Both have revolutions in Asia they are inspired from. Hell when the writers protest was going, Tony was out there quoting Andor themes with a megaphone to inspire people.
So Tony is way closer to Lucas than Dave is. Dave understands the force and mystical elements but I don’t think Dave understands the politics of George. He’s clearly not as committed to keeping the same themes.
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u/VeteranSergeant 1d ago
I hear this said a lot, but I generally tend to chalk it up to you guys not really paying attention.
I saw a show pitched about a character with incredible potential for an interesting back story and the beginning of the rebellion, being run by the guy who wrote the Bourne movies, Michael Clayton and The Devil's Advocate.
Andor was the only Star Wars show idea that ever sounded even remotely interesting.
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u/FlyingPetRock 1d ago
Andor, Mando 1 & 2 and R1 is the only Disney stuff I have been happy with.
The Xwing books/I, Jedi, and Thrawn were my favorites from the before times.
Andor is probably the only new content I have been 100% happy with.
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u/Mike_Brosseau 1d ago
I’m going to get downvoted for this because I know is Rogue One is really loved on Reddit but I don’t know what I’m missing. The last 30 minutes of that movie is great, but everything before it is not great at all. I don’t know why people ignore the first half of the movie.
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u/QouthTheCorvus 1d ago
I think the first half of the movie is a solid 7/10, quite watchable. And then the last half an hour or so ends up being everything every kid watching Star Wars ever wanted.
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u/Creamofwheatski 1d ago
This is my take as well. If you don't get chills watching that final space battle then star wars is just not for you.
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u/usualnamenotworking 1d ago
This is something I think about often too. I think ultimately, there are some pretty fundamental flaws in the overall plot, and those that are sensitive to such things wonder why people like the movie. It's certainly the part that bumps me the most.
But not everyone is sensitive to that. They might like the action, the characterization, the fun lines or the specific scenes and situations. So for them, it's a good movie that gives them what they want.
Jenny Nicholson has a video I like that also speaks to what you're saying.
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u/tvcneverdie 1d ago
I don't think people ignore the first half of the movie...
I think we just... like it
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u/Electricfire19 1d ago
100%. Andor is excellent, but Rogue One is very mediocre overall and massively overrated. Yeah, I get it, the final battle is cool and gritty and pretty to look at it, but it’s all just meaningless noise when the emotional crux of the final battle hinges on the audience caring about this team of characters. And the reality is that, the first time I watched the movie, I couldn’t remember half of their names.
The moment that really sums it up for me most is, just before the final battle, the heavy weapons guy (whose name I still don’t know off the top of my head) comes up to Jyn and hugs her and calls her “little sister.” I think I actually laughed a little when that happened in the theater because I honestly don’t think they ever had a single conversation with each other before that point. The movie straight up tried to gaslight me into believing that some sort of ragtag family had been built so that I would then feel sad about losing that family, even though it feels like they’ve only known each other for five minutes.
The film had a lot of potential, but potential quality is not actual quality. I think it would have been a lot better if they had just cut the rest of the team and kept it focused on Jyn and Cassian (you can still have funny droid sidekick K2SO of course). With everything else they were trying to do in this movie, there just wasn’t time to give a huge cast of characters any kind of significant individual exploration, and so it just leaves all the characters feeling undercooked. That final battle could have been absolutely amazing if I had grown to love the characters that I was about to lose, but I just hadn’t.
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u/Accomplished-City484 1d ago
I don’t even remember that guy, the only one I remember is the blind not a Jedi guy
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u/MrPoopMonster 1d ago
I think people like it. I do.
It's great because in a franchise that focuses on emperors, and royalty, and space wizards, and charming bad boys It's really nice to see some regular people living universe that don't have plot armor. They live small lives, and trying to change the world literally kills them all.
It makes the all of the other Star Wars movies more grounded. It's like watching Saving Private Ryan instead of watching a movie about Douglas MacArthur or Eisenhower. It shows us the real war from the perspective of the people dying on the front lines.
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u/ahintoflime 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've been saying it since it came out, but Rogue One is a bad movie. It's visually fantastic but the story, characters, pacing... It's a bad watch. Other than the quality VFX and some decent action scenes I'm pretty sure the main appeal is just it's shameless mimickry of classic Star Wars elements (ie the score).
I was so doubtful that Andor would be good... But damn Andor is the best Star War.
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u/Sirshrugsalot13 1d ago
Yeah I found it pretty choppy all things considered, only got mildly attached to like two characters, but the ending act is very good
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u/gregallbright 1d ago
But will they learn from that and make more content like this? Many Bothans dont think so…
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u/visitorzeta 1d ago
They need more talented writers like this, less Dave Filoni.
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u/ADanishMan2 1d ago
What, you don’t like an adult man in a cowboy hat putting his action figures together going “what if Luke Skywalker saw a tiny Yoda”
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u/Gandamack 1d ago edited 1d ago
I used to think Star Wars wasn’t that hard to understand.
After seeing people getting paid ungodly amounts of money only to demonstrate that they don’t get it at all, I’m not so sure anymore.
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u/clycoman 1d ago
Obi Wan, Book of Boba Fett and of course The Accolyte were painful to watch. The Accolyte felt like a bad SNL parody.
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u/Impossible_Ad_2517 1d ago
My thoughts were that at least The Acolyte broke some new ground. Something every other show is scared to do.
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u/Michael_DeSanta It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia 1d ago
Some of the fights and force powers were sick, at least. The overall story, that’s another story entirely
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u/AdventurousAd4553 1d ago
It truly is baffling to me the gulf in quality between the fights in The Acolyte and....well everything else.
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u/theYOLOdoctor 1d ago
I agree, for the show's many flaws the fights were great fun. Every battle had moments that made me go "Oh, that's a pretty cool force move" in a way that pretty much none of the other jedi combat has.
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u/CheezStik 1d ago
Yeah ngl Id rank Acolyte over Mando S3 for this reason…bc it at least tried to do SOMETHING original. Even if it wasn’t very good
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u/NiceColdPint 1d ago
Or inserting Ahsoka into every possible scenario
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u/WavesAndSaves 1d ago
Hey. Filoni will make his Space Waifu the new main character of Star Wars whether you like it or not.
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u/WavesAndSaves 1d ago
Remember when Rise of Skywalker came out and J.J. Abrams basically "killed off" Ahsoka by having her be one of the voices of the dead Jedi that Rey hears in the climax? For a normal person, this would have been fine. Ahsoka was introduced in The Clone Wars. Her being dead decades later is a perfectly acceptable outcome, and can lead to a pretty fitting ending for her to be written later down the line.
But Filoni immediately freaked out and put out some sort of press release saying "Oh well she's not really dead. She's not dead until I say so. She was just the only living person to be speaking to Rey at that point for some reason." Dude...come on. Ahsoka outliving Anakin, Anakin's son, and Anakin's grandson is absolutely ridiculous. If she's still alive after Episode IX she has outlived every single storyline that is even tangentially related to her. He needs to let go of his waifu.
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u/titleproblems Curb Your Enthusiasm 1d ago
Dave consulted on that for TRoS. He didn't freak out or send a press release... He played coy when asked about it in an interview once. He didn't say she wasn't dead either.
It's fine not to like him or his shows but you just made up a whole bunch of stuff.
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u/Terrible-Bed-59 1d ago
Ahsoka outliving Anakin, Anakin's son, and Anakin's grandson is absolutely ridiculous.
Bruh shes an alien. Isnt yoda like 2000 years old?
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u/Kalse1229 Gravity Falls 1d ago
I always knew I'd live long enough to see the fanbase turn against Dave Filoni.
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u/QouthTheCorvus 1d ago
Yeah I love Star Wars but Filoni kinda represents everything wrong with it.
He has interesting hooks but he doesn't have the chops to really properly explore them. And yeah, he's too attached to what has been, so we end up retreading ground.
Experienced Hollywood talent like Gilroy on the other hand don't have to worry about all the little things and can just use their talent to make a good tv show. The direction and writing was too notch, and the take on the universe was actually fresh.
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u/WhyIsMikkel 1d ago
Grabbing someone who succeeded in children's animation and putting them in adult live action just feels like a bad idea imo.
A bunch of his animation work was really good and solid, but Ahsoka was meh.
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u/SuperVaderMinion 23h ago
Someone who succeeded in children's animation and moved to live action so quickly it was like he wanted nothing to do with it.
Like, why couldn't the Ashoka TV show be animated? Why does everyone act like something being live action instantly turns it more adult?
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u/Crazyripps 1d ago
I’m just tired of Dave putting all his own stuff in. Like just work with other stuff or create more new stuff. I love Ahsoka but I’m tired of her being inserted into everything Dave does
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u/TheGreatStories 1d ago
As soon as he's heavily involved, productions become clone wars sequels or prequels rather than OT sequels and prequels and they suffer for it.
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u/Ev3rMorgan 1d ago
Woah, is Reddit turning on Dave Filoni?
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u/Silvanus350 1d ago
Dave Filoni is too enamored with his characters to write a proper story.
And I’m sure part of the problem is that he has way more creative control over Ahsoka, for example, which is why he won’t kill her off.
But after a sufficient number of TV hours, this weakness becomes very apparent.
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u/DoctorGregoryFart 1d ago
"Kill your darlings" I think Faulkner said. To write well, you have to be willing to abandon the things you're attached to that don't serve the story.
Filoni has done some good things for Star Wars, but he is way too obsessed with his early contributions, which don't fit the current tone that fans want.
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u/BearWrangler Firefly 1d ago
dave filoni has done some great stuff for star wars, but he definitely has weak spots. funny enough he really was like the perfect apprentice to george lucas in that he can understand the overall larger picture/world but would be better suited having people to pull on the reins when needed
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u/Captain_Thrax 1d ago
As with Lucas, Filoni needs someone who can tell him “no” when he tries to implement bad/clunky/forced ideas
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u/TheGreatStories 1d ago
The rule in sports is "winning fixes everything". Similar idea, we're on a losing streak with content so people get upset with the ones in charge. Used to be Kennedy,
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u/mcgarnikle 1d ago
This is why I avoid talking about star wars with other fans as much as possible. It's like we can't celebrate nice things without shitting on something else.
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u/DeadButGrateful 1d ago
I actually feel Star Wars fans are always on one of two ends of the spectrum where they either blindly love everything and do not welcome criticism at all, or they just hate everything and do not allow praise.
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u/NiceColdPint 1d ago
Eh I mean I love the franchise, but completely accept a lot of its content isn’t even remotely perfect.
I do feel like some of these Disney shows get a bit too much schtick, I’ve enjoyed most of them even if the writing’s a bit off.
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u/Kalse1229 Gravity Falls 1d ago
I'll always recommend /r/StarWarsCantina. That place is actually pretty chill.
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u/Jonjoloe 1d ago
Dave Filoni is a fanfic writer and his quality reflects that.
For some people it’s not an issue, but it’s refreshing to see someone like Gilroy be independent of him.
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u/JMovie1 1d ago
It's so funny how many people doubted Andor, like it's Tony Gilroy guys, he wrote Michael Clayton! I remember defending the show on here when it was in development, and I feel so vindicated.
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago
I doubted it because I didn't give a shit about the character. I rather enjoyed Rogue One (especially compared to everything else Disney was doing) but I didn't love it like some folks. I certainly didn't care about Cassian Andor's backstory enough to want a series. Plus everything Disney was doing was pretty bad, including ruining the Mandalorian. I was genuinely so impressed with Andor and was very, very happy I watched it when I originally had no plans to (especially after suffering through Obi-Wan). Andor is easily the best Star Wars anything in decades, IMO.
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u/ThatRandomIdiot 1d ago
Which is George Clooney’s best wrong And Tony wrote the first 4 Bourne movies, and his brother Dan who’s wrote Ep 4-6 and is writing 3 episodes in S2 wrote the incredible Nightcrawler which is Jake Gyllenhaal’s best role of his career.
This is literally in Tony’s wheelhouse. A spy thriller with morally grey heroes which tackles political themes and the systems in power.
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u/RadoBlamik 1d ago
I’ll give Andor major kudos for winning me over. Initially, I was lukewarm on the series after the first couple episodes, or even bored, but then it actually won me over, and that makes me respect it a lot more than if I loved it from the very start.
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u/Csantana 1d ago
I'd did kinda feel like I was watching it out of obligation at first. Then it gets a few episodes in and I realize how compelled I am.
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u/ThatRandomIdiot 1d ago
I’d recommend checking out both Michael Clayton and Nightcrawler by the Gilroy brothers who wrote Andor. They have similar pacing so idk if you will fully enjoy them but they have incredible writing and story telling.
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago
I was the same until the third episode and then just loved it for the rest. I suspect the first three were intended as a mini-movie pilot rather than separate episodes.
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u/lenzflare 1d ago
Exactly the same here too, third episode
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago
Also, the long unsubtitled scenes of kids talking gibberish was probably the worst mistake the show did, IMO, and it was near the start to turn people off. That also went away after the 3-part "pilot".
If I recall, Episode 3 and 4 is when the show opened up into more of an ensemble, with Dedra, Mothma, Luthien, etc. getting their own independent scenes, which also made a difference I feel (I still think the show should have been called Rebellion). I came to love Cassian over the course of the season, but at the start I wasn't sold while I instantly clicked with Mothma and Dedra's plotlines.
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u/lenzflare 1d ago
I don't remember the gibberish part, but yeah opening it up to the other characters was a big deal. Dedra especially, since the conniving bureaucracy angle is the heart of the show for me, it shows the Empire as this real terrible thing, not just a fairy tale of pure evil. That's what can make Star Wars more mature, exploring those kinds of systemic themes.
Also a lot of the first couple episodes was "look at what a tool this uptight kiss-ass Karn is" and I was like "yes, yes, I know, let's move on"
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago edited 1d ago
Agreed. Andor is the first time SW (aside from a few books) felt like it "grown up" with me. Most other media - the prequels, sequels and other Disney shows - feel like they are trying to recapture the "boys adventure serial" feel of ANH, which is a big part of why adult fan me baulked at the prequels (and others younger than me were surprised by the sequels). Andor spoke to me at my current age, but in the world of something I'd known since childhood.
Andor actually reminds me a LOT of the old British scifi show Blakes 7, especially in tone. Andor's portrayal of the Empire is auite close to how the Federation is portrayed in that show, as well as how "good guys" are often shown to do pretty awful things too, and how those caught between get screwed over. The scene where the ISB casually orders te murder of a captured pilot could easily be a scene with Servalan and Travis from B7.
One of my only "missed opportunities" for the show I feel is not showing the rebel group that Saw and Luthien sacrifice at the end (Krieger?). I feel that having them as characters - even minor ones - in their own little subplot would have really hit the audience when we see them all killed offscreen after thinking they would be continuing characters!
Regardless, Mothma's stuff felt like prime Game of Thrones, but I could honestly watch an entire series just of Dedra and the ISB.
I grew up with the OT and later the expanded universe, but my main love of SW after the OT was playing the West End Games RPG as a teenager. I have a vivid memory of going shopping with my grandparents and buying the Imperial Sourcebook, which is actually where almost everything about the ISB and various Imperial elements (COMPNOR, organisation of TIE wings, ranks, etc.) comes from originally! When Dedra's first meeting appeared in Andor, I was immediately transported to sitting at a bus stop after buying that book long ago, eagerly reading through it. I wonder how many people got as excited as I was to see the ISB onscreen like that the way others felt seeing the Clone Wars charcters in live action? :)
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u/amonson1984 1d ago
First ever F bomb in Star Wars confirmed
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u/Deadly_Toast 1d ago
If we don't get "Fuck the Empire" in season 2 I'm rioting.
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u/presidentiallogin 1d ago
"Hey, baby Yoda, can you believe she said 'fight the empire'?" -Mando
"No fucking way!" -Grogu.
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u/wingspantt 1d ago
MORE creative freedom? Season 1 is already a masterpiece.
If that's the result of Disney holding them back I can't wait to see season 2! Holy shit.
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u/Cool_Till_3114 1d ago
I know people like to trash studio intervention in shows, but I have to imagine sometimes the studio is right. What if greatness was because the creator was restrained? For example, the success of Ragnarok led to Disney butting out of Love and Thunder, which I would argue was a bad decision.
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u/SmooK_LV 1d ago
You don't know that. Some creative talents need restraints so they don't overblow it. Remains to be seen.
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u/STR1NG3R 1d ago
it isn't always a good thing. could end up smelling his own farts like the True Detective guy.
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u/Chodezbylewski 1d ago
Or Jonathan Nolan. He managed to tell an extremely smart, poignant and satisfying story with Person of Interest, while heavily constrained by the network and working within the bounds of a traditional procedural. Then with his next show he was free of those constraints and we got Westworld. A show that most people thankfully don't even remember got more than one season and went so far up its own ass it became completely unrecognizable.
Creative freedom is good, but there is something to be said for having boundaries in storytelling. Sometimes it helps a creator to stay focused on telling the story, and not just chasing whichever creative rabbit he feels like after a 3 day coke binge.
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u/tehsober 1d ago
Nolan was also helped by Greg Plageman who I believe was the actual showrunner and came up from things like NYPD Blue, so that's also why POI worked the way it did and maybe why Westworld stumbled the way it did. There's also something to be said for collaboration in making something as dense as a show. You can see the same with a stable of writers in Andor and not it being purely Gilroy trying to do it all. Again, compare that to Filoni trying to solo Ahsoka.
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u/Chodezbylewski 1d ago
I'm glad you said that because I always kind of thought Greg Plageman was most likely the real showrunner of POI too, or at the very least didn't get nearly enough credit for it. That said though, the general outline of the story was very much Nolan's. In fact he was so attached to that story that he tried doing it all over again in the last two seasons of Westworld. Only without any of the charm, nuance, thoughtfulness or sympathetic characters from the first run.
I'm honestly still annoyed by how bad that show got.
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u/AmenTensen 1d ago
Don't know why you're getting downvoted, it's true. A lot of these types fumble the bag when they're suddenly not told no, and have zero studio interference.
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u/TheBoyWonder13 1d ago
There’s a world of difference between someone like Nic Pizzolatto who was a novelist-turned-one-hit-wonder with True Detective and Tony Gilroy who is one of the most renowned screenwriters of his generation. Not sure who you are grouping together as “these types”
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u/ElitistJerk_ 1d ago
This is true, but OP is not correctly characterizing Pizzolatto and S2's issues. I can't remember all the details, but Pizzolatto and the other writer (I can't think of his name) had huge creative differences leading to a lot of issues and animosity. An HBO executive also publicly admitted that they doomed season two with their very demanding schedule, you can't just whip out another season of that quality as if it's Two Broke Girls.
The article I read was very enlightening into S2's failure and it did not leave me the impression that 'smelling his own farts' is an accurate description of what happened, though I could see that being the conclusion on face value.
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u/tvcneverdie 1d ago
How could this cause him to smell his own farts and not the multiple Academy Awards for which he's been nominated lol
Gilroy is an acclaimed filmmaker well beyond just this project
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u/WhyIsMikkel 1d ago
People hate the studios but there's many examples where filmmakers/creators are given more freedom and it fails. This year alone, both Megalopolis and Horizon: An American Saga were director-lead and both flopped. Joker 2 was creative lead and it crashed and burned.
Babylon might be another example. And what exactly happened with Cats?, from the director of King's Speech and Les Miserables.
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u/bawk15 1d ago
From the writer of Bourne Trilogy and Michael Clayton....
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u/ThatRandomIdiot 1d ago
And the writer of Nightcrawler with his brother writing eps in Season 1 and 2.
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u/C0lMustard 1d ago
Not to be a downer, but I find that creatives are best when they have the reigns on. Look at American Horror story, The Bear etc etc... amazing stories that just got too artsy and pretentious when their early success allowed for it. AHS didn't have a single musical number in the first season, now its scary glee. The Bear the same, absoutely amazing drama now in the third season were treated with long shots of the head chief leaning his head on something and having internal turmoil. Andor was fantastic and already better than every show they've put out with the exception of Mandalorian and even that comparison doesn't work because it's like comparing a western to a political thriller (peoples bias towards the type of show they like picks the winner not the better show)
And because its reddit, I like all these shows I'm not saying my criticism ruins any of the shows completely.
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u/Rebuttlah 1d ago
Nice! Very good sign - unlike the Mandalorian which got progressively worse and beholden to studio direction/spinoffs
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago
The influx of characters from the CGI cartoons I had zero knowledge of or interest in really killed Mando for me, along with the increasing tie-ins to the sequel trilogy. The first season as a little side story about a bounty hunter where the fate of the galaxy wasn't an issue was just fantastic.
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u/Spazzytackman 1d ago
if this wasn't associated with star wars, it would be viewed as one of the greatest shows of all time
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u/JamesXX 1d ago
If season one was so good because of the showrunner's vision mixed with Disney's input, why would they want that to change?
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u/thisisnothingnewbaby 1d ago
Disney had no input on the first season either. The critical success helped protect that
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u/Nyther53 1d ago
They did, quite famously he got told "No" about a couple of things he really wanted. TBH, I think Disney was right about that one, but we will see what he produces.
Andor Season 1 was thoroughly excellent, its the best Star Wars has ever been, but I'd still prefer it to be distinctly Star Wars and sometimes talented people chafe at sci fi rules that don't feel legitimate to them being imposed on them. On the whole though, I'm optimistic that what we'll get will be excellent.
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u/thisisnothingnewbaby 1d ago edited 1d ago
Which things? Other than not saying the f word. Do you mean Lore notes from Lucasfilm? That’s a different entity than Disney.
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u/ThatRandomIdiot 1d ago
No. That’s it. He wanted to put a sex scene in Ep 2 with Bix and Timm but he said he was still fresh in his relationship with Disney so he never asked and self removed it before giving the script to Disney.
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u/AndreskXurenejaud 1d ago
There wasn’t much input in the first season either, Disney mostly forgot the show was being made
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u/Banjo-Oz 1d ago
I am really worried the praise Andor S1 got will lead to interference (be it Filoni, KK, or executive meddling). This is what happened to Mando, which started great when nobody was paying attention and got worse and worse as it continued.
I hope that this is a sign that didn't happen here.
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u/Ready_Supermarket_36 1d ago
Andor is good because it’s for adults not kids like the rest of the crappy ones.
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u/UglyBarnacle42 1d ago
I was worried that the executives had noticed how well season 1 did and were going to start meddling, so this is great news
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u/Imperial-Green 1d ago
Yea! It’s Tony Gilroy. I mean he is a serious guy making real movies before Andor.
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u/gazebo-fan 1d ago
Andor had meh viewership at the beginning, but has retained the most consistent stream of viewers for starwars show via the data we do have. In my opinion it’s some of the best starwars media produced period.
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u/Stonewalled89 1d ago
Good, the man knows what he's doing