If there have been an award for taking a collection of grim clips from a grim present and making them appear completely joyous, then the trailer for Andor season 2 — coming to Disney+ on April 22 — could be a lock to win this yr.
As followers of season 1 know, Andor might be many issues (jail break drama, political intrigue, pulse-pounding spy thriller), however mild and fluffy it ain’t. In keeping with creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy, Andor is really a Charles Dickens-like tale: an orphan tries to flee his circumstances, discovering associates and foes who expose the darkish coronary heart of a merciless period.
That orphan is after all Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), one of many insurgent spies who (spoiler alert for a 9 yr outdated film) dies after transmitting the Dying Star plans to the Insurgent Alliance in Rogue One. Gilroy is evident about the truth that the present finishes the place the film begins.
So we already how Season 2 will finish: with Cassian completely keen to kill a colleague who would decelerate his escape, and completely able to die preventing the Empire.
Cassian’s destiny — certainly, the destiny of all of the insurgent figures we see on this trailer, together with future insurgent chief Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) — is to be haunted by all of the struggling in service of that trigger. (That is exactly the purpose of Mon Mothma’s most famous line, the primary time we met the character, in Return of the Jedi.)
You may see it right here of their frightened faces, Cassian’s transient smile and enjoyable 1950’s-style disguise however.
You may actually see it within the hardened gaze of Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), additionally returning in season 2. Noticed, as we all know from Rogue One, Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, is essentially the most morally-compromised insurgent within the galaxy — a lot in order that Mothma and her shadowy contact Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) shun his strategies.
Rael, additionally seen wanting unhappy within the trailer, already summed up the place all his fellow rebels are heading in Andor season 2. “I’ve given up all likelihood at internal peace,” Rael stated in season 1’s most critically-acclaimed performance. “I made my thoughts a sunless place, I share my desires with ghosts, I get up day by day to an equation I wrote 15 years in the past from which there’s just one conclusion: I am damned for what I do.”
What’s that trailer music making an attempt to say?
At first blush, then, it could appear out of sync {that a} 2004 rock anthem by Steve Earle, “The Revolution Begins Now,” performs over these pictures. The music attracts our consideration to the colourful occasion Mon Mothma is attending, the newest in a collection of elite gatherings for the Senator, fairly than her anguished look.
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In the meantime, the enhancing makes it appear to be Cassian and his hooded colleague are detonating a bomb in a constructing behind them with the coolness of motion film heroes, not the hardened masks of reluctant rebels.
Nonetheless, Earle’s lyrics communicate to a different highly effective story thread in Andor. The tune implores listeners to make a stand, to “rise above your worry and tear the partitions round you down” regardless of the place you might be. That remembers the Season 1 speech by Kino Loy (Andy Serkis), who overcame his worry and helped his fellow prisoners to flee by working collectively.
It additionally matches with the “combat the Empire” speech delivered by Cassian’s adopted mom Maarva (Fiona Shaw) by way of posthumous hologram within the season 1 finale. In keeping with the director, Gilroy’s original line for Maarva was “fuck the Empire” — evidently a way more rock-and-roll assertion than Disney+ would enable.
The Season 2 trailer incorporates one other, doubtlessly extra troubling tune lyric, nevertheless. It is delivered by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, returning to the franchise for the primary time since Rogue One). “What a swell occasion that is,” we hear Krennic say, over a picture of him gazing lovingly at his pet mission, the Dying Star.
That is clearly taken from the Cole Porter tune “Properly Did You Evah,” most famously carried out by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra within the 1956 film Excessive Society. The tune is a satire of two drunk, gossiping occasion visitors, who deal with even the potential destruction of Earth flippantly, and repeatedly return to the scene round them with the identical line: What a swell occasion that is!
You would possibly count on that Krennic says this line on the similar shindig the place we see Mon Mothma. It could match Coruscant’s political elite, the folks we have already seen wilfully ignoring the rise of the Empire throughout them, with a wink on the viewers.
However it might additionally breach one of many floor guidelines of the franchise as laid down by George Lucas. Star Wars, traditionally, would not wink on the viewers. There could also be plenty of enjoyable available in it, however the galaxy far, far-off takes itself very significantly in the case of making itself immersive and plausible.
It’s possible you’ll discover reminders of Earth tradition within the distant future (keep in mind, that is all taking place “a very long time in the past”), however they’re all intentionally mashed up with one another, creating one thing that feels new and alien.
The cantina band in A New Hope could also be taking part in one thing that appears like swing music, however they’re additionally bizarre insectoid aliens utilizing uncommon devices. (Precise Earth musicians had been thrown into the much-reviled Star Wars Holiday Special, proving the purpose.)
So Krennic instantly quoting Cole Porter? This ain’t it, chief. We have by no means heard the phrase “swell” in a Star Wars story for a similar motive we have by no means heard “groovy”: it is too clearly linked to a time and place on Earth.
We will solely hope that Tony Gilroy is doing the identical right here as he did when he stepped in to reshoot Rogue One: reducing a controversial trailer that contains moments never seen in the final cut.
As a result of hey, even Charles Dickens wanted so as to add some layers of fluff and enjoyable so the general public might swallow his grimmest tales.
Andor Season 2 premieres Apr. 22 on Disney+.
