Andor and What It Means To Be "Mature" Star Wars | The Backdrop
Added 2025-05-06 19:05:27 +0000 UTCOn this episode of The Backdrop, Darren Mooney examines Andor and what it means for Star Wars to be "mature."
Comments
Not really. It’s a show that has a lot to say about systems of oppression, how they work and succeed and where they fail. By focusing at times on even the most minute details of how an authoritarian regime functions and gets “the job” done it brings life to the people, their lives and their environment and how the big set pieces (which we’re shown in detail how they can be defined and how they could have failed; still great as set pieces on their own). It asks “how” and tries to answer that within SW’s universe (which established that framework) Not one mention of the Force either. Refreshing is what it is. Timeless, too (arguably)
jombilywobbily
2025-05-07 20:04:00 +0000 UTCAs someone so burned out on star wars even this glowing review can’t reignite my interest, take this how you will but… is this just Dune/early Game of Thrones dressed as Star Wars? Because it would be quite a damning indictment of the medium if we’re once again at the point of being overwhelming impressed by something that seemed innovative in television 10+ years ago (namely the trust that an audience can focus on the big picture between 2+ different narrative threads)
Tim Wilson
2025-05-07 17:53:45 +0000 UTCInteresting you mention manga there. For every Elfen Lied there’s a seinen (or whatever the term is for “seinen but for women) that’s categorised as such because it’s just about the drudgery of working an office job. Meanwhile the ones ostensibly just for teenagers and below includes “Devil Man”, to this day the most harrowing thing I’ve ever read and seen. Cultural differences are dope.
Tim Wilson
2025-05-07 16:32:30 +0000 UTCAh, I'm still so very disappointed that we didn't get the alleged original cut of Rogue One, which was less Guns of Navarone and more Saving Private Ryan, complete, again, by rumor, with an R rating! Exciting! Doesn't get much different than Star Wars pre Disney than that, and the Galactic Civil War era SHOULD be dark and scary! It was a dark and scary time, and it was dark and scary for most people under the Imperial boot heel. Getting down in the trenches is, and was, the only real way to break away from the 'high fantasy' space opera of the Skywalker saga. It's a big world, it doesn't have to have the depth of a tea spoon, and I feel Andor's managing to actually get some of that death. Shame Disney's barely managed any of that, seemingly in spite of itself. Hopefully the Mouse learns from Andor and produces Star Wars material with a bit more story telling intestinal fortitude. Full concur with Ryallen and Gregory Maus. Especially on Ryallen's comments about late 90s scifi on TV. Ah for the days of DS9 and Babylon 5. We didn't know how good we had it.
TwoHeavens. Esq
2025-05-07 04:11:20 +0000 UTCI think another element that contributes to Andor's sense of maturity compared to other Star Wars streaming shows is that it really dives into the mundane social realities of the Empire and the Rebellion. We're used to simply knowing that the Empire (and other Star Wars antagonists) is evil because they blow up planets or perform similarly over the top atrocities, and while Andor doesn't shy away from portraying those, it also conveys all the little banal evils and exploitations in an authoritarian system, as well as the costs of having to oppose that system when you're not a space wizard or have super armor: it's inherently grounded in a way that mirrors them shooting it in real-world locations and using real-world props.
Gregory Maus
2025-05-06 20:25:55 +0000 UTCLate 90s sci fi has always been peak television. Star Trek, especially DS9, Stargate, Babylon 5, and other shows like it are some of my favorites. DS9 is one of the best shows I've ever seen period and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for something truly interesting. The assertion that "mature" television means, to you at least, television that allows its audience to draw its own conclusions and understand what is being put on screen rather than spelling it out is certainly interesting. I feel we, as a culture, attribute maturity to darkness. A story cannot be mature if it's not about rape, drugs, and violence. Which brings in plenty of stories that have those things but fail to use them in an effective way and thus fall into the "edgy" category, using mature themes as set dressing to make characters or story beats seem a lot more intelligent than they actually are. Plenty of books, comics, manga, and TV shows I've seen have used such themes to try elevating themselves above what is actually happening in each episode/volume. But instead calling attention to implication and assumed mindset and allowing the audience to intuit what is being communicated and the complexities therein is certainly something I can more easily attribute to maturity than a love of violence and sex. Justice League Unlimited is another show that I feel tries to use darker ideas to tell a more mature story but I also think it succeeds rather well at it. It interrogates the threat of super-powered individuals in the real world and how a government would react to that. It has villains recruited as state-sponsored hero countermeasures, most of whom die off quite gruesomely by the end of the show. It also has one of the greatest interactions between some of the most magnetic personalities ever put to animated television voiced by some of the most iconic voices given animated form, Clancy Brown and Geoffery Combs. My point is that Justice League Unlimited is fantastic and did the cinematic universe thing before Marvel ever did it. Oh, and that maturity should be considered more than just an interest in the grotesque and titillating.
Ryallen
2025-05-06 19:42:13 +0000 UTC
