There Is Nothing Slow Or Boring About Andor
One of the constant complaints I hear regarding Andor is how the first few episodes are boring, nothing happens, what was the point of all this? In this era when there isn’t a Michael Bay Explosion Inside an Explosion
people think a particular show or movie is slow I found the pacing of Andor to be nearly perfect.
We all know the over-arching plot — Cassian Andor becomes a rebel intelligence officer, steals the Death Star plans, and dies, but what Tony Gilroy did was far deeper and more subtle than that. He was giving us the theme, we just had to take a breath, slow down and pay attention.
In that opening episode he introduces us to two young men.
One is an aimless grifter, the trauma of his childhood has left him empty despite the love from his adopted parents, and he loses his father-figure in a brutal act of injustice. Cassian cheats, steals, sleeps around, he’s a coward and a deserter, a small time crook. The only thing that gives him any purpose is his search for his lost sister and that feels more like a story he tells himself to give himself purpose. Cassian has no idea who he is or what he wants.
Contrast that with Syril Karn. Solidly middle-class. Reasonably well connected. Uncle Harlo can get him a job. Mom has a safe in the apartment with money and jewelry. Syril knows exactly who he is, his purpose, his goals. Doubts and confusion are unknown to him.
And then all that certainly, that sense of purpose, of his very self is stripped away in the flames and dust on Ferrix. For Syril to doubt himself, his choices, his certainty, would leave him rudderless, lost and forced to examine the emptiness inside. He can’t face that so he blames everything that happened, everything that went wrong on a single individual, the man who eluded him, humiliated him — Cassian Andor.
Cassian has no idea who Syril might be, he never gave that arrogant corpo a second thought, but for Syril, Andor is his obsession. He has become Javert. Syril has lost all sense of a broader purpose and been reduced to obsessing about one man. The genius of those early episodes is to show these two men and then carefully, step by step begin to have them switch places. One man is evolving, the other devolving.
Syril had a code that governed his life. Cassian had only the desire to get through the next day with enough money for a drink and a boink. But by the time of Rogue One Andor knows not only who he is, but what he is fighting for, and he has gone to serving a higher purpose.
You always get these questions — “What’s this character’s arc?” Well, Gilroy gave us an abundance of arc, and braids them together in this stunningly elegant way.
There is power in a story of transformation. And there is nothing at all boring about it.
Yes, Cass, they were listening, and you made Maarva proud.