It is rare to hear the word “genocide” unequivocally pronounced on television, not to mention the Disney +streaming service. So it was a bit of shock to meet the term in a late episode of the second season of “Andor”, a “Star Wars” mini-series -Spinoff which has become something like the “Game of Thrones” of the extended universe of the George Lucas opera: Gritier, Grougier and more political than his predecessors. In the scene in question, a liberal senator and idealist of the imperial government who controls a large part of the Galaxy is expressed against a revenge against the Protestant residents of Ghorman, a planet that the Empire tries to captivate and militarize. The senator, named my Mothma, risks her political career and her life to make an emergency speech addressing the incident. “What happened yesterday on Ghorman was an uninsured genocide. Yes, the genocide,” said Mothma. The other senators are immediately in effervescence, and Mothma must be introduced as a smuggling of the Senate spherical chamber to avoid removal by a turnaround.
“Andor” has an extremely elaborate vinaigrette. A spectator could easily get lost in the various planet names, revolutionary factions, extraterrestrial breeds and auxiliary robots (I particularly liked a feast paparazzi right). There are whole sub -intrigues involving a high-end gallery, a kind of gagosian which deals in extraterrestrial artefacts, some perhaps forged. But the show – which was created by the scriptwriter Tony Gilroy, who wrote the ethically agonized legal thriller “Michael Clayton” as well as several scenarios in the series of films by Jason Bourne – is better if you can pass the most obvious signaling of the cane “Star Wars” and appreciates the canon of the twisted political conversion as the two seasons of the series. (According to Gilroy, the story was planned for five seasons, but was then made, which makes it a welcome exception for omnipresent streaming bloating.) The fables, after all, work partly by defamatory, in the casting of archetypal conflicts in a world that we recognize even if we do not live – the persistent absence of princesses and fairy Subine of the symbolism of surprise. In the case of “Andor”, under all laser blasters and X-WING space vessels, you will find one of the most sharp traditional criticisms of contemporary political beard on television.
The homonymous character of the show is Cassian Andor, a pilot, played by Diego Luna, who was removed from his native planet as Orphelin by nice smugglers. Andor is charming and raw, a cowboy of solo space used to jostling his own path. But in an attempt to find his sister lost for a long time, Andor is caught in a branch of the nascent rebel alliance, a guerrilla warfare against the Galactic Empire, which is a fascist regime led by the emperor Sheev Palpatine. Andor’s rebellious guru is Luthen Rael, played by Stellan Skarsgård, a gray destroyed that sends his charge on various mysterious races to help Stoke or make rebellious attacks against the Empire. The paternal-ish link that forms between Rael and Andor is the heart of history. Rael radicalizes Andor, as he was radicalized himself, working for a revolution that he is unlikely to see materialize, of which we do not require a small amount of dirty work in the present. “I burn my decency for someone else’s future,” growls Rael at some point. Its all or nothing strategy of wild provocations which often sacrifices its pawns in conflict increasingly with the desire for stability of Andor, and with the requirements of the growing ranks of the rebellion, which need hierarchy and management – the bureaucrats, not the assassins.
“Andor” dramatizes nuances of political difference: everyone is an extremist for someone else. As an imperial military director says: “My rebel is your terrorist.” (The director is building the death star, but it is difficult to imagine that the moralist Luke Skywalker of Mark Hamill in the same troubled universe.) Syril Karn, an imperial bureaucrat played by Kyle Soller, undergoes a radicalization parallel to Andor, by perpetrating with enthusiasm the imperial oppression; Egré by its own superiors, until it is too late to stop. My Mothma, the senator played by Geneviève O’Reilly, is liberal compared to her colleagues, but she is also an asset of Rael and a secret supporter of the rebellion. Extremism can make things happen in “Andor”, but it generally makes its members vulnerable. To act is to become a target.
The pivoting of the new season concerns Ghorman, a planet of fabric of Swiss-French fabrics which carries yellowy berets and cultivated silk arachnids. The normally starred Ghormans are ignited when the Empire begins to build a massive geometric building in the center of their elegantly artistic capital of Palmo. The new tower overlooks a place in which hundreds of Ghormans had already been massacred in a past imperial incident. The planet holds minerals that the Empire desperately needs, but it will have to be mined with bands and the inhabitants would reinstate themselves. To justify the destruction of Ghorman, the Empire greases the titles of the anti-Gangarman media, promoting the feeling that its people deserves retribution. At the same time, Rael pulls strings to encourage Ghorman dissidents to attack the Empire. The result is a series of revolts and a system of tightening oppression which make conflicts inevitable, preparing the terrain for what the senator label the genocide. Although this intrigue is in no case cards precisely on the current events of our world, history can not help calling war in Gaza – and it walks further in its denunciation of a violent occupation than most reports.
“Andor” is both well served by and retained by his prudent slap in a larger multiverse of lucrative intellectual property. The “Star Wars” parameter gives the show the integrated vocabulary and landscape as well as stock characters to deepen. The well -known and predicting issues of the universe of “Star Wars” – Empire Bad against Good Rebellion – are the “Andor” writers to jump in a complex history in mid -action. But by the final of season 2, the connection of the conscientious points takes over. “Andor” ends at the starting point of “Snape One“, The 2016 film which, in turn, ends just before the original film of” Star Wars “of 1977, and various characters in the series must make their way on the narration of failures in their predestined places. Cassian Andor is now an experienced rebellious captain; My Mothma, the Senator outspokenness, is safely on the rebel of the Planet de la Maison. K -2SO, a butler type killer robot of Butler of “Rogue One”, which seemed designed to sell figurines, received here an elaborate story: it was part of the force which perpetuated the genocide on Ghorman – a bloody scene which has a significant weight on the camera, but is salvage and reprogram the bold origin between the Rebellages. Incongruous, as if and had appeared in “Mad Men”. The droid suggests the predominance of Disney’s commercial priorities on Gilroy’s desire for adult drama.