Andor Andor Episode 2.06 Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Facial surgery IU for whatever reason. New trend. Shrug.

 

My bad Smits is younger then my parents 69 by a couple years.

 

2005: ROTS came out


current year: 2025 which matches pretty much with ANH, how on Earth can he be too old to play the part?

 

Smits was first cast as Bail in Attack of the Clones which took place in 22 BBY (7955) and was filmed in 2000. This season started filmed 22 years later in 2022. Bail was only in this arc briefly specifically because he was recast, so had Smits appeared, he would have showed up when the show was in 2 BBY (7975), 20 years after Attack of the Clones.

So Smits would have only aged 2 extra years than the character, with the main jarring thing coming from him looking so much younger in Rogue One.

 

Actually, I do find it quite difficult to understand, for a very simple reason: you (and others) tend to be on the other side of the discussion about the suspension of disbelief in virtually every single issue other than recasting.
If, for example, someone points out contrivances in the plot, or poorly designed sets, goofy dialogue, or weirdly looking AI generated characters, the reaction tends to be, in most cases, to either roll the eyes, or to work fairly hard with the creativity to come up with reasons why the scene actually makes sense, if you deeply think about it.
Though, this sort of healthy elasticity, for some reasons that, indeed, I fail to understand, completely disappears when it comes to the specific issue of recasting, and virtually no other issue other than that.
To a pretty large number of people, recasting has a sort of special place among the critiques to the franchise.

 

so you are comparing...poorly designs sets, goofy sounding dialogue, and weird looking AI characters to human characters suddenly being completely different people and other characters in the show not thinking this is weird?

say your brother came in saying he was your brother and he suddenly looked like/was Chris Hemsworth, you wouldn't have a problem with it? you wouldn't think "so who are you and what did you with my bro?"

 

Certain things are more subjective and less or more important to certain people.

While I'm not against recasting, it's pretty always going to be at least a little jarring, Sopranos is probably the one show where I didn't notice or care about most of the recasts since it was mostly minor characters, or characters who haven't shown up in a while.

In this particular case I find it disappointing since I'd have really liked to see Smits shine in this type of show and he would have the been the main connective tissue to the Prequel Trilogy. But is it is what it is. It really seems they tried to make it work but the stars didn't align.

 

Eeehm... Yes?
Both instances can break the suspension of disbelief. Is this even controversial?

Also, if my brother suddenly looked 20 years older than he's supposed to be, I'd be weirded out as well, though the anti-recasting people are usually fine with that.

 

I will always be in favor of recasting over weird CGI abominations intended to approximate real people.

 

Eeehm...I think it's pretty strange that people aren't really getting that for some, re-casting breaks the immersion as if it is somehow a Psychological disorder that needs to be studied to be 'understood'


Be a bit like Ian McDiarmid being replaced by Jim Carrey or even Ewan McGregor replaced by Jim Carrey (to give an example without make-up) for some people, that would be quite jarring, is this even controversial?

 

The biggest defense would be Clone Wars Anakin who looks, talks and sounds like a different person. Going in, sure, you are accepting you're watching a cartoon with a stylized art direction, but even in that lens where most of the characters at the very least have decent soundalikes who try to replicate the performances of the movie characters, Anakin sticks out, but people mostly accept this new performance.

All that being said, they should 100% just get someone to voice Vader instead of the AI voice. JEJ is iconic, but this is like the easiest, least jarring recast to do, plenty of people can do the voice, Lucasfilm has already used some of them, Matt Sloan, Scott Lawrence, Fred Tatasciore.

 

I'm struggling to understand what point you are even making here so it's hard to assess how controversial it is.

 

Personally, as I've said, I find watching computer-generated fakery impersonate a human being far more jarring than seeing another flesh-and-blood actor take on a role.

I think @3sm1r has it right: it's a legitimate criticism of SW fandom that huge chunks of it have become so inured to CGI that they prefer digital artifice (and the multiple layers of removal from an original performance which that entails: body doubles, deepfaked faces, voice alteration, etc.) over simply recasting.

Keeping an open mind about what a new actor can bring to a part is no bad thing. And it provides an important space for actors to actually act, rather than merely serving as a reference point for VFX artists.

 

well to be clear (as crystal hopefully)

changing the actor, changes the character for some people. Obviously not to you, and obviously to the many others that share you viewpoint, but I wouldn't say I "don't understand" your position, you see the character as the character regardless of who's playing it, I respect that, I also respect it does not bother you,
So I think it would be more fair to say "I don't agree" rather than what could be read as "I don't understand" (as in what is wrong with you people?) especially with made up terms like 'recasting-phobia' thrown in there

but you do you, I'll do me and all that.

 

I feel like recasting a voice role is different than live action. As you point out it’s a stylized version of the character so I can look past minor differences like he doesn’t sound exactly the same.

Ultimately though it’s just a personal preference and I don’t need anyone to understand it. There are things that bother me and take me out of the scene like a recast and there are things that don’t. I wish I could be fine with it. I don’t want to dislike a significant part of the show. But it is what it is.

 

An honorable 7 out of 10 for me on this one.

Better than the previous two parts, but I still felt there was more to be desired. I am not one of the people who constantly want action (my favorite scenes in Rogue One are the slow burn ones), but here I absolutely felt that I wanted more action. Scenes like someone frantically trying to unscrew a bug from under an art piece make me yawn. We all knew she was going to make it, so that kind of tension is meh to me. Oh well, hopefully the next movi.... uhm, 3 episodes, will be better.

I will give a huge amount of praise for the worldbuilding, especially on Coruscant, on these 3 episodes. That was really really good. But the lack of aliens is still a problem, and most of the locations outside of Coruscant are too generic and common. Zero imagination. The majority of planets look like Earth. Ugh.

PS. Benjamin Bratt is a good actor, but he is not Bail Organa, nor was he convincing on that role IMO. Sure, he only appeared for like a minute, but still. I wish they had found a workaround so that Jimmy Smits would have appeared. Who by the way is at the perfect age, not sure how that was even a discussion.

 

I thought the recast worked, as all recasts generally do. For me, the only time it's going to be weird is if I do a marathon of RotS -> Kenobi -> Andor S1 -> Andor S2 -> RO
(Smitts -> Smitts -> N/A -> Bratt -> Smitts again)

 

I totally get why recasting is immersion-breaking for a lot of fans. It just isn’t at all for me. For me, things like bad CGI, poorly designed sets, and other visual artifices, are far more immersion-breaking than a different actor playing a role. But it’s all just personal taste and instinct and there’s no reason to argue about it. And Gilroy actually had some empathy for fans who would feel as you do, and so tried to soften the blow by introducing Bail here in an inconsequential scene as a warmup. Get the immersion-breaking out of the way and then continue. I’ll take the PT-OT connection of including an Organa in this show over the slight immersion issue. So I sympathize with Gilroy wanting to include the character. But I respect your feelings on it, given that I have similar feelings about other things.

There have been way more aliens this season. On Coruscant, in Saw’s crew. And some prominent features ones with speaking roles at the Sculden party. Including that really big one that was invited to the private collection viewing. One of the best-realized aliens yet too. Man that CGI looked expensive.

 

I'd like to see the occasional Rodian, Twiliek, Ithorian, etc. Coruscant, for example, in RotS was filled with them.
They've fallen into the same trap the ST did by creating all new species, although to be fair they have reused some of the ST created species.

Also wondered if Mon was a bit of xenophobe? She's a politician, working and acquainted with thousands of different species, yet at the wedding celebrations there was only one alien. And to reiterate the other point - it was a new species.
I'm not really serious with the xenophobe remark, I'm just being flippant.

 

At the wedding celebration, I counted four different alien species.

 

I'll have to watch again. I only saw one.

 

I think a good comparison would be if they hadn't used CGI for Luke but instead had recast Luke as a random person, perhaps Robert Downey Jr for instance. Would people be saying "Oh come on that's clearly Luke get over it" or would they be saying "Yeah it's hard to take RDJ seriously in the role". Extreme example but I think there's something to be said for the visual jarring nature of a recasting.

Like.. if people think we shouldn't care about recastings why don't we have a Han, Luke and Leia show set 5 years after ROTJ with brand new actors?

 

There were two familiar classic alien species I spotted this season. Bith and Neimoidian (not 100% sure but seems like the mask is same one used in acolyte) Bith was in Coruscant space port when Cassian left to Ghorman bith was coming down the stairs when Cassian was going up and Neimoidian (?)gentleman was shopping fabrics on Ghorman Twillery.

They use more sequel-aliens though. I also think one Abednedo, which has become one of new basic background aliens was seen there on Ghorman, Also Aki Aki, Caskadag and some unidentified bigheaded humanoids. Senators had Tarsunt, Ottegan and Cingulon among them and possibly new species that alien that was giving speech in senate ceremonies (I wonder why Mas Amedda is not there anymore).

In Mothma's wedding there were some aliens. One new four horned species https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_four-horned_species
Individual named Jodi was present https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jodi's_species
And these
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_large-headed_humanoid_species
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Letrun_Pay's_species
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_species_(Chandrila)
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_receded-hairline_species

All were blink and you miss it cameos though.

I agree there should be a bit more aliens in visible roles. Like it was a missed opportunity to not have any in Maya Pei's Crew.... but maybe Maya is xenophobe human.
On Ferrix we saw hidden Rodian like twice and there was one pretty visible Kubaz in Maarva's Funeral that took part in riot and was taken away.

 

CGI is frankly also jarring, especially when the voice is also fake. While for a brief appearance CGI Mark might have been acceptable, in the long term it's probably for the best if the human characters look as real as the other human characters.

And I mean there are ways to make a show without retconning or using likenesses. It's called animation, they made a Prequels show, so if they wanted they definitely could have made a show following Luke, Han and Leia post ROTJ. The reason they didn't do that probably came down to giving freedom for the sequel writers, and now people are kind of hesitant with how to move things forward, and also because those movies were using the original actors who aged into the older version of the actors, making it kind of weird to go back and say "No actually even though we just got Mark Hamill to play old Luke, Luke no longer looks like young Mark Hamill, it's now an Ewan McGregor aging into Alec Guinness situation".

Even if all that was settled, I'm guessing it would still be a big and hard question of what that show would even be about and where it would naturally end, Lucasfilm might be scared touch and use them in a major capacity.

Star Trek has been recasting characters for their prequel stuff and fans have mostly been fine with it, though Trek has also been looser with continuity and will actively handwave or break canon. Bail probably feels weirder because it's sequel material where the actor was at the right age and we just saw him playing the character around the same-universe era, making it feel more like a sitcom type recast. Especially if Smits reprises the role later on.