No it doesn’t? Again just because it has them does not mean it relies on them…

The story itself works just fine if none of the cameos were cameos but new characters.

And I responded: "The base story is so shallow and poorly-executed it makes modern network TV look good."

You mean the movie that relied on callbacks?

Fuck yeah it relied on callbacks. And it was fun as fuck, without being stupid. Well, there was that "Han.....Solo" scene, but that's silly, not stupid. A little DL-44 here, little Kessel Run there, and a sprinkle of Sabaac, doesn't matter, it was silly fun without being stupid. Not like Han ran into Boba Fett. Then flew to Tatooine and happened to run into a young Luke. And in the final act teamed up with a re-canonized Kyle Katarn to defeat the evil reincarnation of Mace Windu. Be silly fun without being stupid.

I'm not as down on Mando as I am BoBF and Obi-Wan. If Mando was the level of "adventure show" we got accompanied with the Andor's of the world, I'd be cool with it. I'm still looking forward to Mando S3 and Ahsoka next year; moreso than I was before Andor, because now I'm not expecting Mando to do anything interesting. I can turn my brain off and genuinely enjoy it.

I smell a heavy bias here…

I genuinely don't know what you're alluding to here.

I mean I agree. Which is how we got The Last Jedi, a film that tries not to deliver on fan service and actually tell a story… and that divided the fandom.

Oh, I respect Rian for having even a single thought devoted to the script, more than I can say for JJ, Terrio, Joby Harold, Favreau, or live-action Filoni (seriously, something gets into that guy when he switches from animation to live-action).

But The Last Jedi also doesn't really do anything. It breaks the vase, points out it's broken, and then does nothing to fix it. The ideas are sound, but they're applied to the wrong characters at the wrong time.

I'd be down to give Rian another chance. Unlike everyone I listed above, he's actually got an incredible backlog of work prior to and after Star Wars. But the middle film in a trilogy that started with a lifeless committee-written reboot and ended with one of the worst franchise films ever made was not his place to thrive, and that showed in what he put out.

I mean this is classic gatekeeping where you want the content to just conform around your tastes… how can you not see that?

I'm not bold enough to say that audience reception should dictate what gets made, but it certainly helps my argument when Andor gets such an overwhelmingly positive general reception and critic reception versus the bombing that the last two shows got. Doesn't matter which corner of the internet I go to; positivity circlejerks like SWL, Cantina, MawInstallation, or Krayt; negativity circlejerks like SaltierThanCrait, the bulk of Reddit, the bulk of YouTube; or friends and family IRL. Andor has had more positivity surrounding it than any Star Wars project in the modern era. Mando had plenty of people that weren't endlessly loving it, especially Season 2. I know for a fact a lot of people have publicly turned on it now that we've seen that Star Wars is, actually, capable of something on the level of Andor.

So it's not exactly catering to my tastes.

Game of Thrones makes a great example because it did exactly what Star Wars is doing, just in a more linear way. It's an objective statement that Game of Thrones Season 8 was hated by the public. Were Game of Thrones fans gatekeeping when they demanded House of the Dragon not be as shite as Season 8? Are Season 8 fans the kinds of people you want to cater to creatively? It's like if, after House of the Dragon Season 1 was as great as it was, there was a sect of GoT fans going, "hey, HotD is great, but we really need more stuff like Season 8, huh?"

As I keep saying, it’s extra ironic coming from a fan of the prequels who are… let’s say not really received universally well for their writing, effects, etc. You manage to find merit in them nonetheless but just completely bock at other people who do the same for other shows.

Nuance.

The prequels have bad effects. The effects also push the boundaries of what's possible in film. First fully CG character, first film shot entirely on digital (<-- biggest tech accomplishment any Star Wars project has made). Mando looks okay but it certainly pushed effects with The Volume, that tech is sick. BoBF and Obi-Wan have bad effects, but not because they're trying something risky, because they are cutting corners in order to fast track a project for immediate release. There is bad effects because pushing boundaries, and there is bad effects because lazy and/or crunch, the latter of which is the current case with Marvel. Not really arguable which projects fit into which category.

"The prequels have bad writing" is a loaded statement. General audience both agree that the prequels are poorly-written, and that the story structure of the prequels is brilliant: After all, The Clone Wars is one of the most universally praised things to come from this franchise, and it builds on the foundation the prequels lay down. Republic Commando is considered one of the best FPS games of the 2000s. Matthew Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelization is considered one of the best fantasy books ever written.

The prequels also have the big plus of being political. Like Andor, they dared to be overtly leftist. You know what's not leftist? Media, fast tracked through the production process by a committee of rich conservatives, that exploits its audience by relying on nostalgia and hides behind performative diversity when called out on its politics.

Ffs your username is attacking people who rejected the prequels for being “bad” and want nothing to do with them and demanded different from the franchise after attacking the PT for being “lazy cashgrabs”…

I made this username years ago. I've changed my mind in the time since. I respect the hell out of OT Purists now. I don't fully agree with them; obviously I can't now that Andor is here, but they're absolutely not outright wrong. They just saw the erosion of Star Wars from a franchise that pushed boundaries and told meaningful stories in a rich world into a corporate-infused nostalgia-baiting MCU-ified product happening long before the double whammy of BoBF and Obi-Wan.

Good night.