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

On 6/1/25 4:11 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

On Jun 1, 2025 at 2:25:17 PM PDT, ""Ian J. Ball"" <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:

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  )...:
>
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.

 So Felicity Jones couldn't make it back as Jyn Erso? I haven't finished the
show yet, but I've heard about the ROGUE ONE cameos and was hoping to see Jyn
again. She's always been one of my favorite female action lead characters,
like Ripley and Sarah Connor. She's smart and capable without having to resort
to the usual nonsense of watching her beat up men three times her size.

Unfortunately, there would be no in-universe justification for Jyn to show up in "Andor" - she and Cassian had clearly never met before "Rogue One", and in fact at the film's open she's in jail (presumably for some time?).
Now, they could try to do a "Jyn Erso"-featured background TV series a la "Andor", but 1) Jones is probably to old now and gets "more too old" with every year that passes, and 2) I'm guessing Jones wouldn't want to be tied down by a Disney+ series like that.