‘Andor’ review: ‘Star Wars’ revives Diego Luna’s character in a slow-moving prequel to ‘Rogue One’
(CNN) A prequel to a prequel, “Andor” brings a gritty tone and look to the “Star Wars” universe, as much the washed-out landscape of “Blade Runner” as George Lucas’ far-away galaxy. Yet whatever promise that entails is mostly lost in flabby storytelling, essentially stretching what would have been a 10-minute movie prologue over the first three episodes.
Disney+ has wisely decided to launch the 12-episode prequel to “Rogue One,” starring Diego Luna as the spy Cassian Andor, with those three episodes, providing a somewhat better sense of the series’ framework than the plodding first installment. It takes until the fourth, however, for this origin story’s plot to come into focus, and by then, “Andor” has already become a bit of a snore.
Created by veteran screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who received screenplay credit for “Rogue One” and played a role in its reshoots , “Andor” proudly wears on its sleeve the fact that it’s not another “Star Wars” series intended to wow fans with cameos (although there will be some of those) or sell plush toys. Gilroy seems more interested in telling a terse spy yarn with a caper component — think “The Guns of Navarone,” only with spaceships, droids and the occasional alien.
Following a less-trodden path, though, doesn’t excuse moving at the pace of a wounded Bantha, bogged down by flashbacks to the protagonist’s childhood. Nor do these early episodes do enough to distinguish the shifting cast of supporting characters, a group that doesn’t provoke much more than indifference.
Andor’s eventual fate is already known, so the thrust of the show involves fleshing out how he made the leap from hating the Empire, and its arrogance, to engaging in the fight against it.
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