Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-05-31 (Saturday)

On 6/1/25 11:16 AM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:

What Did You Watch?

I treated yesterday as my first "vacation day", and it was glorious! I did nothing!  :D
But I did get through the end of "Andor" and rolled that right into a rewatch of "Rogue One" (or is it "Rouge One"?!!  ;p  ), plus a soap:
soaps: DOOL - Thur's ep. Drama about the purchase of the hospital - everyone who is a hospital board member is extremely ambivalent because the two buyers are EJ ('nuff said!) and Xander whom everyone thinks beat Philip to within an inch of his life (they're right - Xander did do that!). In the end, Jada shows up to arrest Xander for that crime and haul his ass off to jail, leaving the final board vote, which is Brady's, to decide who gets the hospital.
golf - Day three at the Memorial. No suspense here - Scottie Scheffler moved into a tie for the lead, and then the outright lead when Ben Griffin choked on a putt on the 18th hole and bogeyed... Expect Scheffler to win this today.
Andor (Disney+) - The final 3 episodes - ep's #2.10-2.12.
    The final three episodes are top notch, though the "One Year Later (BBY 1)" teaser at the start of #2.10 is patently untrue this time, as these episodes basically take place mere days before "Rogue One" (or is it "Rouge One"?!!  ;p  ), which itself take place just days before the original "Star Wars" movie's ending. (So, more like "BBY Day T-7" or something!)
    These episodes do have some fun bringing back tons of people from the "Rogue One" film... with one major exception - I didn't even realize until I watched "Rogue One" again that Bail Organa had always been played by Jimmy Smits, and not Benjamin Bratt as he was in season #2 of "Rogue One"! (I really wonder why Smits couldn't make it back - they claim "scheduling conflicts", but I'm not buying that and wonder if Smits has health issues... or if they didn't want him back?!) FTR, I actually *prefer* Bratt's take on Bail.
    Anyway, in the final episodes, Lonni Jung finally hits pay dirt in Dedra Meero's files (which he's been snooping on!) and finds out that everything that has happened previously is all tied together in the Imperials' plan for a "super weapon"! (though Jung doesn't know the name of this weapon). Jung wants out, but in his one final dastardly act, Luthen Rael does NOT send Jung home to his family.  >:/
    But doing all this likely means Jung is blown, which means Luthen is also almost certainly blown to the Imperials as well. Sure enough, Dedra Meero soon shows up. Will Luthen get out of this alive? Will Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau)?! Will they be able to contact Cassian Andor in time to come rescue them?!
    After episode #2.10, I was very worried that we would be robbed of Kleya's escape from Coruscant (with them just skipping to her on Yavin), but episode #2.11 pretty much was 100% about Kleya trying to escape Coruscant. Also, there's finally backstory of how Luthen came to be Luthen and how Kleya came to be his "daughter" (of sorts) in episode #2.10 as well.
    The final episode is pretty much 100% set up for "Rogue One", which is actually unsatisfying, as we know there will be no follow up on the stories of Kleya, Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) or Bix (Adria Arjona). In fact, I'm finding this incredibly frustrating, as this series may end with (effectively) Cassian's "end", but there are a bunch of others here who survive "Rogue One" whom we will get no follow up on.
    (P.S. Whatever happened to Mon Mothma's dopey daughter, esp. after Mon fled the Empire as a traitor?! We get a final scene with her husband, and the lovely Rosalind Halstead as the mother of her daughter's husband, implying that he wasn't arrested, but I am skeptical, and we get no mention of the daughter after the wedding.)
    As for the Imperials, it goes badly for all of them, especially Dedra Meero who finally gets her just desserts for being an Imperial spy fangirl.
    But, as far as Cassian goes, this sets up a pretty heroic ending for him (even if "Rogue One" doesn't 100% deliver on this), and gets all the other pieces that we see in the "Rogue One" film in place.
I then followed this up immediately with:
Rogue One (or is it "Rouge One"?!!  ;p  ) (Disney+) - In glorious 4k! though this movie looks so good that even in non UHDTV, it still usually looks great.
    I mainly watched this to see, 1) how well it lines up with the "Andor" TV series, and 2) how well it matches up in terms of how people look between the film and the TV series (where season #2 was filmed about 8 years later!).
    On the former, I'm going to say... not well. At the end of "Andor", Cassian is in possession of a lot more information that he seems to know in "Rogue One" - like, he already knows the Empire has a "super weapon" (even if he doesn't know its name), and he already knows about Galen Erso, but *none* of that comes across in "Rogue One" which clearly portrays Cassian as not know about the details of any of this stuff. Nor does Cassian *ever* mention anything about a "girl he lost" in this film!
    I don't know what you call this phenomenon, but it's basically the *exact opposite* of a "retcon [retro-continuity]"!!
    However, I did appreciate Andor's executing the informant in this film being foreshadowed by what Luthen does to Lonni Jung. That was a nice touch from the TV series.
    On the second point, they do a lot better: Diego Luna and Genevieve O'Reilly look the same or imperceptibly different between the film and the TV series. And while Alistair Petrie (as General Draven) looks a little bit older in the series, it's not so as you'd really notice...
    However, this is definitely *not* true of Ben Mendelsohn as Krennic - he looks *way young* in "Rogue One" which means he looks *way older* in "Andor"!
    I'm going to say that Duncan Pow (as Sgt. Melshi) - and I didn't realize he was in both seasons #1 & #2 of "Andor" as well as this film! - also looks noticeably younger in "Rogue One" which means he looks noticeably older in "Andor".
    And, of course, Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa here, while Bratt plays him in Andor.
    "Rogue One" is very likely the best SW film since the original trilogy (probably by a lot). But, in comparison to "Andor", it actually comes off as "trite" and simplistic - not as simplistic as all the other post-original trilogy SW films, mind you, but definitely trite in comparison to the depth of "Andor".
    I wonder if, over time, they will come to regret making "Andor", as it will inevitably take some of the "shine" off the good feelings that "Rogue One" has engendered.
What did you watch?