Why Was Andor So Good

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It’s been a year since the Star Wars franchise spin-off of a spin-off Andor completed its second and final season with the last episode flowing seamlessly into Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and for many people Andor represented the best material since the original trilogy.

But why is that? What makes this limited series of just two dozen episodes so compelling and so vibrant compared to the rest of the vast and sprawling additions to that ‘galaxy far, far away’?

I think the answer lies in part in the cultural environment that the series was released into. Star Wars hit the box office in the late seventies, a period when the old Hollywood studio system was effectively dead before the mega-corporations took control, when the ‘young Turks’ and their Producer Unit system dictated the industry. These young, rebellious filmmakers explored themes of loss and cynicism with films that dominated the public’s attention. Even when the protagonists of these films claimed victories at the end of their struggles they proved to be Pyrrhic ones. Michael becomes everything he did not want to be at the conclusion of The Godfather, or their victories came at terrible prices such as the death of Father Karras in The Exorcist. These examples don’t even touch the cases where there was no victory, only soul-crushing defeat for the characters, such as at the end of The Stepford Wives.

Star Wars, a straightforward tale of good vs evil where it is unquestioned that evil will fall, exploded into the setting with an undeniable dynamism and optimism. In a nation that still reeled from political turmoil, senseless violence in its cities, and the unfathomable loss in a distant Asian country, this film, which at first blush appeared to have no cynical subtext, was received like a miracle cure for the ailment dogging the American spirit. In combination with Jaws two years earlier, it created the summer blockbuster and reshaped not only film production and distribution but the course of the culture for the next few decades. Studio after studio and production company after production company chased the enormous dollars that seemingly lay in simple adventures, clearly defined good and evil characters, and hopeful narratives leaving the darker, moodier, and more challenging stories from Blade Runner to The Thing to fail at the box office and only be recognized for their artistic merits many years later.

So how does Andor, a story where our protagonists commit murder as the easiest path out of their troubles, kill allies that they perceive to be a threat, willfully allow others to fly to their doom in order to protect their secret, and whose ‘villains’ gain our sympathies as they struggle against the same impersonal bureaucracy that enslaves the galaxy even as they viciously and ruthlessly hunt our ‘heroes,’ compel such admiration and love from its audience?

By the time Andor came to production, the American culture had changed quite dramatically, coming full circle from the 1970s back into a wary and tired cynicism, but after decades of hopeful, optimistic media the public taste for something that reflected the world they knew had grown quite intense, setting the table for something as ethically questionable as Andor to satisfy that hunger. Where audiences in the 70s needed escape from the bleak times, audiences of the 2020s wanted to see their times reflected back at them, but with the promise that victory, even if costly, remained a possible outcome. The enemy’s competence, once a source of derision such as with the marksmanship of the Imperial Stormtroopers, could be recognized even as their villainy remained patently obvious.

And that brings us to the second element that I think contributes greatly to Andor’s success in these times: the depth of the characters.

It is wrong and an injustice to both Andor and Star Wars to label their characters as either ‘complex’ or ‘simple.’ The truth of the matter is that these are very different genres of storytelling, and I do not mean science-fiction or fantasy, but something much more basic than that. Star Wars is a fairy tale, even opening with a revised version of ‘Once upon a time …’ with ‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …’. Andor is a drama, not a fairy tale.

In a fairy tale characters are presented with far less depth, often representing archetypes instead of fully realized humans. The Princess, the Knight, the Thief with a heart of gold, The Mentor, the Dark Knight, and the villainous, corrupt King: all these are stock representations of character and not characters in and of themselves. These archetypes often lack depth but that does not make them bad characters, it makes them the right characters for the story that is being told.

Dramatic characters tell different stories: they do not tell fairy tales but stories of relatable characters facing relatable issues, even if the environment where they face those issues is fantastic. Andor’s Dedra Meero is a villain. She tortures prisoners, and is willing to murder entire populations, but she also is conflicted by some of her actions, she mourns the cost of her dedication, and weeps at the loss of a love she thought she had won. These elements of her life do not make her ‘superior’ to Star Wars’ Grand Moff Tarkin, who displays not a moment of doubt and slaughters entire planets as a mere display of power. Both characters serve their respective genres. Cassian Andor, when faced with the accidental death of a corporate police officer, does not hesitate to kill a survivor, an action that Luke Skywalker would never even consider, much less commit.

Andor is not better than Star Wars; to compare the two is like comparing a painting to a sculpture. The reason so many people took Andor to heart is because like Star Wars in the 70s it is what they hungered for, even if they did not know it.

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This is Not a Review of The Odyssey

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Sunday morning, after finally shaking off the effects of a two-day migraine attack that lasted from Thursday through Friday, my sweetie-wife and I caught an early morning screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I wish I could tell you how I really feel about this film, but I cannot because of its presentation.

First, a little background on my sweetie-wife’s and my moviegoing habits. Her hearing is fairly sensitive and as such she finds modern movies are played too loudly for her comfort. To combat this she brings a set of cushioned headphones to wear to cut down on the sounds of the film. Most of the time I do not, but the last movie we went to together, Supergirl, I too found the volume overly loud and uncomfortable. Due to that experience and knowing that Nolan has a penchant for making his sound mix loud, I brought along a pair for myself, just in case.

It was not enough.

Universal Pictures

The Odyssey was far, far too loud and in particular the bass which played frequently and with such intensity that it obliterated from my mind and perception everything else in existence. My mind was too concerned with the discomfort of the soundtrack to ever slip away into that dream-like state where the characters and events on the screen took on their own form of reality. I was much more concerned about my seating than I was about any machinations or palace intrigue that took place in Ithaca. Thoughts of dealing with the bass that sliced through me like a phaser pushed from my attention any feelings I might have had for the character lost at sea or the poor doomed Trojans slaughtered in the night. I was present when The Odyssey was screened but I cannot truly say that I actually watched it with any real attention. In the film’s penultimate act, when a terrible storm batters Odysseus, I had to physically cover my eyes because the pounding the audience had suffered at the hands of the audio mixer pushed me once again toward a migraine and the flashes of lightning were simply unendurable.

I can report that The Odyssey does not drag, even during its nearly three-hour runtime; Nolan is too talented a filmmaker to let that happen, but his devotion to an overpowering soundtrack undermines what might have been an enjoyable feature.

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Thinking About The Batman

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Bruce Wayne, AKA The Batman, is an enduring character that first emerged in 1939 from the pages of Detective Comics and has been with us in some form ever since. Recently, I have been noticing a number of posts that seem to place the version of the character presented in the Zack Snyder films as the ‘best’ version. Now, Snyder’s fans are vocal and intense just as fans, which is a perfectly fine expression of devotion, but I cannot find myself in agreement with them on this. One of the clips that they post and re-post is the fight between Batman and a number of thugs in a warehouse where Batman has come to rescue a woman held under a threat of being murdered.( I am being vague for those who have not seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.) This to me, and that film in general, do a disservice to the essential nature of the character.

Batman, despite predating the term’s general use in fiction or film, is for all purposes a noirdetective and that is what resides at the heart of the character. He investigates and exposes crimes and criminals with his brilliance, but like another fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, is adept at combat in all its forms because his opponents are never shy about employing violence. It is perhaps a strange quirk of fictional evolution that over time the two characters, Holmes and Wayne, who shared so much in skill and ability, diverged until what is glorified in each comes at the cost of their full skill set. Holmes, despite in the text as being proficient in so many forms of combat, becomes primarily an intellectual and Wayne, despite being brilliant, is noted for an impressive array of martial arts, his devotion to deduction mostly forgotten.

This reaches its apotheosis in the clip posted and re-posted by the Snyder fans. It is from a film in which Batman’s intelligence and detective skills are utterly forgotten as the character is manipulated and led to plainly false conclusions by the film’s principal villain.

Perhaps this is why my favorite cinematic Batman is Matt Reeves The Batman which, while showing elaborate hand-to-hand skill, is much more of a film noir than a martial arts experience. Even when Bruce Wayne fails to grasp the true nature of a clue he remains at heart a detective, untangling a complex web of cause and effect and ultimately not only uncovering the villain but his true self at the same time.

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People in 1941 Were So Dumb

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Anyone who listens to the wise, educated, and informed opinions of right-wing podcasts and revisionist historians, who possess the courage to dismiss all the collective judgment and scholarship of their peers, knows that it is an unquestioned fact that communism and fascism are two very similar branches of the same tree firmly rooted in the politics of the left.

What is surprising is that the people of 1941, who were living with the active and expanding aggressive wars of both the fascists of Italy and Germany, were so ill-informed as to make the same blundering error as the woke-infested historians of our days and see communists and fascists as somehow opposites, as left vs right. This shallow understanding of true political knowledge is perfectly displayed in what many scholars of cinema call the finest motion picture ever produced, Citizen Kane.

The film opens, after the on-screen death of Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), with a newsreel covering the man’s public life. (In the days before television, short films of the nation’s and world’s news played in theaters before the cartoons and movies.) To dramatize how the fictional character was seen so differently and in directly opposite natures by so many millions across the nation two clips are used, one from a banker and one from a labor leader. Here is that clip.

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The filmmakers, the screenwriters, and the audience were far too ignorant to understand that communists and fascists were the very same thing, even as they watched the events of the Second World War unfold around them; they remained dumb to the reality of those events which only a few very special people today can perceive accurately.

Of course, it is not even remotely possible that these conservative posters and revisionist historians have their own self-motivated reasoning that draws them down this path of equating the two philosophies. They are far too noble, too objective to fall prey to such human frailties. This forgotten relationship between communism and fascism is not the product of conservatives trying in dire desperation to distance themselves from the mass murderous thugs that populate their history. The postings and tweets from real Americans sharing the depictions that make it plain that the images of the hammer and sickle and of the swastika are in fact completely equivalent are not convoluted rationalizations.

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Still Not My Skill Set

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Let me make this clear with upper case characters in bold:

I WOULD NEVER USE AN A.I. GENERATED BOOK COVER.

What I will do is use A.I. to mock up an idea for a cover, one I would use as an example of my thinking with a human artist who could then help me realize my vision or dissuade me from making a noob mistake. So, should I be so fortunate as to work with an artist to craft a cover for my ’80s, cinephile, gay, ghost story, here is a starting point for something that might work as a cover. (Note, A.I. added the text ‘A Novel of Old Hollywood’ which this is not, despite a passing reference to ‘Poverty Row’ studios .)

A.I. Generated

To prompt this image, I used a photograph of the now retired Ken Cinema located here in San Diego California which served as inspiration for the fictional Kensington Theater the main character’s joy and life and the source of his terrifying troubles. I think if I were working with an artist, I would ask them to remove the generic city skyline from the background, give us more of the sky, and make it night with nothing but stars overhead. I would also ask that the sidewalk in front of the Kensington be lightly populated with people in costumes waiting for the midnight screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But, in general, I kind of dig this concept for a cover.

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Excited for and Dreading Next Weekend

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So, next weekend, July 17th, is the release of Nolan’s next film, his adaptation of The Odyssey. A

Universal Picture

movie that has already drawn fire from idiots online who believe that true beauty can only be represented by fair skin, blonde hair, and sky-blue eyes and has reignited the, from what I can tell, unjust attacks on Emily Wilson’s translation of the epic. I can’t see this two-bit controversy causing any damage to a film by Christopher Nolan and creator who managed to make a lengthy feature that focused on testimony in bland little rooms into an award-winning and box office monster. No, The Odyssey will do just fine, and my sweetie-wife and I will be there Sunday morning to see it on its opening weekend, but it will be a test of endurance as the reported running time is a staggering two hours and fifty-two minutes.

Clearly Nolan cares as little for his audience’s bladder health as he did for their respiratory health when he pushed Tenet into theaters while the COVID pandemic, a pandemic that killed a million Americans, still burned hot. Because the studio, Warner Brothers, delayed the film’s theatrical release, from its original July 2020 until September of that same year, Nolan severed his relationship with them and has since camped his productions at Universal.

Three hours without an intermission is hardly in the same category as expecting people to flock into a confined space while an airborne disease burns its way through the population, but it is also a sign that the filmmaker has little regard for the comfort of their audience. AMC theaters will be a little unhappy because while I plan to see this film, I have adored most of Nolan’s projects (Following is dumb and Interstellar is an overly cynical derivation of 2001: A Space Odyssey.) I will not, for my own comfort, be purchasing any size of diet soda from the concession stand.

When Quentin Tarantino released his nearly three-hour feature, The Hateful Eight, an enjoyable but ultimately lacking film, he included a limited run of a ‘roadshow’ release where the film was presented with an intermission. Nolan isn’t even giving us that. It’s a large-format film and nearly three hours but without a break for the audience.

Nolan is a talented director and writer, someone willing to challenge audiences with complex plots presented usually in a non-linear fashion, but I wish to the gods that he did not also challenge our biology as well.

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Do Not Become Republicans

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It would seem that, with the horrid and credible allegations surfacing about Platner, fate has bestowed upon Susan Collins, the GOP senator that promised to serve only two terms, a successful election returning her to the US Senate for a sixth term. Swapping out Platner this late in the cycle for another candidate, most likely the aged Janet Mills, is unlikely to produce an electoral victory for the Democrats, imperiling their quest to take control of the Senate from the spineless and corrupt Republicans.

Given the stakes involved, it is heartening that voices raised in support of Platner are, to quote the bard, ‘But few of any sort, and none of name.‘ However, this is a vital and important ethical juncture for the Democratic Party. The desire, the need, the critical importance of wrestling control of the Federal government and bringing vital checks on this rogue and unlawful administration is a goal that I deeply share but it must not become something so all-consuming that the quest for power renders all other considerations immaterial — that is the path that led, in part, to the GOP becoming captured by Trump and his slavish cult of personality.

Rightly or wrongly, for the last 20-30 years the Republican Party has become more and more myopic about the Democratic Party, seeing them not as a party with the same love of country but simply different policy goals but instead as an evil and wicked force that must be eradicated from the public sphere. The coordinated campaign destroying Bill Clinton was not about tax rates or welfare reform and the years and years spent investigating his supposed financial corruption and the endless berating on his lack of truthfulness were merely means to an end and not an application of principle. The defense and devotion to Trump reveals that lie all too plainly. It was the quest for power and total control that paid false fealty to our Republic while undermining it at every turn that ultimately led to acquiescing to a man who attempted to overthrow the government. And many in the GOP, but far from all, believed that they were on the side of the angels, quite literally, that their ‘just’ end excused every lie that escaped their lips until they welcomed racists and Nazis into their tent, until even the execution of citizens in the streets could be excused.

This is the warning to the Democratic Party, that the single-minded desire to do ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘save the nation’ can in the end damn that which you seek to rescue. I believe that the Republican party must be driven into the wilderness, to wander the trackless political desert until it has shed its sins, but to achieve that goal the Democratic Party must not become the very monsters that they combat.  It starts with Platner and doing what the Republicans are unable to do: throw a credibly accused rapist from the party.

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Streaming Review: Cat People (1942)

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Producer Val Lewton working for RKO pictures in the 1940s was tasked to create a number of horror films but without the money to hire established stars or productions of any real scale. His solution, turning to psychological horror, relying on what is left unseen but imagined by the audience yielded some fine examples of horror that has influenced filmmaking and the genre to this day. The Body Snatcher, adapted from a Robert Louis Stevenson story gave horror legend Boris Karloff his finest role and performance and launched the directorial career of Robert Wise who directed films in every genre clear into the 1970s. I Walked With a Zombie, blended inspiration from Bronte’s Jane Eyre with Caribbean mysticism, eschewing the cheap laughs or schlocky horror of zombie-centered stories for something with more drama and reigning as the ultimate zombie inspired film until displaced by Romero’s reinvention of the sub-genre in the late 60s. However, it is 1942’s Cat People that is arguably the most influential of these productions responsible for every over-used jump scare and inspiring an R-rated remake in 1982.

Criterion Channel

Helmed by legendary noir director Jacques Tourneur, who also made Night of the Demon, and written by DeWitt Bodeen, Cat People centers on Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) a young artist recently immigrated to the United States from Serbia. Irena labors under the belief that she is descended from wicked, evil witches,  and cursed that when suffering strong passions, such as lust or anger, she will transform into a large and murderous panther. Quite against her plans, Irena falls in love with naval architect Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) and marries him but refuses the marriage bed due to her terror at transforming. The cast is rounded out by Jane Randolph playing Alice, Oliver’s assistant and the third component to the doomed romantic triangle and Tom Conway as Dr. Louis Judd, a psychiatrist friend of Oliver who attempts to help Irena past her ‘delusion.’

Lacking the resources for elaborate transformations Tourneur and Lewton relied upon atmosphere and mood to achieve the desired tension in the audience. One of the most influential sequences is when Alice, walking alone at night, becomes terrified that someone or something is stalking her. She is correct. As the audience, we know that Irena, hot with jealousy, is indeed following her along the dark street where only isolated islands of lights from the streetlamps allow any real visibility. When Alice reaches the bus stop, she and the audience are wound quite tight when the sudden and very loud hiss of the bus’s air brakes shatters that tension in what is widely considered to be cinema’s first ‘jump scare.’ A technique now so widely over-used that is often associated with mediocre directors who are unable to build the requisite tension in their films.

I find the character of Louis Judd the most perplexing member of the cast as I can’t determine he is meant to be seen as tragic or as an evil man. While I understand that code of conduct between doctors and their patients, even informal ones such as Irena, have changed greatly from 40s I find it hard to excuse in any manner Judd’s actions towards the young woman. Certainly by today’s standard and what we know of power dynamics between physicians and people under their care and power his disastrous attempt to seduce Irena is not only unjustifiable but also criminal, but this was hardly the case in 1942. When he released the panther within her, it can be seen as tragic for Doctor Judd or as a case of ‘good for her.’ Frankly, I believe that he got pretty much what he deserved.

Being produced in 1942 Cat People needed to stay firmly within the puritanical guidelines of the Production Code, which was rigidly enforced from 1934 through the middle of the 1960s, and as such the exact nature of Irena’s curse could not be fully and plainly spelled out. Sexual intercourse, beyond any depiction of it ever occurring outside of marriage, could not be directly referenced, only implied, making the details somewhat obscure to a modern audience, an obscurity that filmmaker Paul Schrader did not labor under when he remade Cat People in 1982.

Both versions of these films, the original and the remake are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

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A Feat Never Before Achieved — by Me

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After some recent beta read feedback, I decided a few weeks ago to revisit my first horror novel The Wolves of Wallace Point for some minor revisions, edits, and corrections. The beta reader had enjoyed the novel but commented on some aspects that I thought were worth at least considering and since it has been a few years since I wrote the thing the only way to fairly evaluate this feedback was by reading the entire manuscript from front to back.

Plot, setting, and the mechanics of a story are pretty much the easiest things for me to craft, I work a little bit more on dialog, though this beta reader had praised that in this novel, and struggle the most with the apparently simple elements of titles and character names. I often joke that there is a blood-stain spot on the wall next to my desk where I routinely bash my head in search of those things. As such none of my novels have ever had titles for the chapters. Coming up with 20 or 30 titles was simply something hardly worth the effort.

While revisiting this book, which is written in the 1st person point of view, the character’s voice in chapter one leapt out with a title for it, A Priest at an Orgy. Once my fevered brain latched onto that concept I couldn’t shake it, but you can’t title only one chapter, either they all have titles or none of them do. So the process began that while I re-read the manuscript, making tiny adjustments here and there to the prose, I tried to keep my senses tuned for sardonic and ironic things that protagonist said or thought, like the orgy commentary, that might serve as a title for the chapters.

And now, 27 chapters later, I have titles for each and every one in the book. Most I am satisfied with, some I think I need to revisit again and see if something better doesn’t hide within the text, and a couple, like Fuck David Lynch and Camp Crystal Lake I am very happy with even if their applicability tickles only me.

Now, I have a new epilog to write, with a new ending sentence and mood that came to me last night and after that some serious thought about self-publishing the thing.

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Widow’s Bay: Season Wrap-Up

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Almost two weeks ago I wrote about the horror/comedy series Widow’s Bay produced by and streaming on AppleTV, at that time I had just about caught up with the episodes in their weekly release schedule. Now the entire season has been released, and I can look upon the whole of its introduction and resolution.

AppleTVWidow’s Bay has been described as what if the mayor of Amity in Jaws was  our principal character and that is a fair point of comparison. Both deal with fictional New England seaside towns, one already a tourist destination but finding its summer bonanza threatened by a Great White shark that just won’t stop eating the swimmers, fishermen, and boaters, the other an isolated economically depressed community seeking to bring in those tourist dollars despite the supernatural curse laid upon the island hundreds of years prior.

Mixing comedy with horror is a tricky business, both styles depend upon the unexpected, the sudden reversal of an expected outcome, making them close siblings but when combined usually one flavor dominates over the other. Disgraced television and film creator Joss Whedon side stepped this trouble by frontloading the comedy in his pieces and draining it away almost entirely in the back half leaving horror to dominate the final acts of his works. This technique would not work for Widow’s Bayand would instead have come off like a switcheroo on the audience if the front half of episode had been mostly or entirely comedic and the back half horrific, Katie Dippold needed to find the balance in each of the 10 episodes. I think, for the most part, she did. While I found the final resolution to the season just a touch unsatisfying it was not so much of a stumble that I did not enjoy the entirety of the season and look forward to the next already ordered season.

Without a doubt my favorite character in the show is the long suffering, socially awkward, and nearly communally invisible aide to the mayor, Patricia, played to perfection by imported performer Kate O’Flynn. Perhaps I, also socially awkward, identify too closely with Patricia but I also think that the writers, who may also be socially awkward it is professional hazard, have a soft spot for her. The pair of episodes that center on her, 4 Beach Reads & 8 Your Baggage, are clearly my favorite. Beach Reads plays along the lines of one of my favorite sub-genres, Folk Horror, and Your Baggage makes my least loved subgenre, the Slasher, into something I actually enjoyed.

Episode 9, Emergency Shelter, in a crafty bit of writing, production design, and acting pulls off one of the most entertaining bits of pure exposition that I have ever witnessed on the screen. In The Terminator James Cameron buried exposition with action, having Reese explain the plot to Sarah Conner and the audience during a heart-pounding car chase, truly hiding your vegetables in your dessert, but Emergency Shelter stops the plot cold, laying on the brakes heavily and yet remains thoroughly fun and funny while it feeds you literally generations of genealogy and history, made possible by the acting talents of Dale Dickey as the town clerk.

The show’s central protagonist, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) has the thankless position of straight man in the comedic sequences and terrified normie in the horrific ones, I still found his character a bit too bland to fully and emotionally engage with. His relationship with his moody and disobedient teenage son failed to plow new ground and his central goal, bringing tourism and money to the island, with the side effect of hopefully freeing his son from the island’s curse, while understandable never felt more than a rote character motivation.  For too much of the season I think we were not fully privy to motivations and that kept the character at a distance, leaving him feeling more perfunctory than realized. Rhys does an admirable job with the character and keeps him from feeling too bland, giving weight to his terror as he realizes that the island’s curse is quite real. His seemingly impossible choice in the final episode is played quite well and does much to redeem the character’s portrayal from the rest of the series.

While I have noted some of the shortcomings in this series, I want to stress again that I enjoyed it and look forward to the next installment of the trials, tribulations, terrors, and tongue-in-cheek misadventure of this poor cursed community.

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