Diego Luna Explains How Andor Is Different From Other Star Wars Shows & Movies
Diego Luna, who plays the title character in the Andor Disney+ TV show, has explained why his show is so very different to anything else in Star Wars. Created by Tony Gilroy, Andor is perhaps the most unlikely Star Wars TV show of them all. Where other series have marketted themselves using an abundance of Easter eggs, Andor is Easter-egg-lite. It’s focused instead on tremendous character arcs, presenting a chilling vision of the Empire at its height and carefully exploring the political themes George Lucas himself wove into the Star Wars franchise.
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Related: Andor Season 2: Story, Updates, & Everything We Know
Speaking to Hayden Christensen himself in an interview published by Variety, star Diego Luna explains just why he believes this show is unlike anything else in Star Wars. Initially recalling the more grounded approach of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, he continues:
“And on Andor, we took even further, the idea of you have to forget this is Star Wars. Tony Gilroy was very specific, always. Every time you had to explain too long what you wanted to do, he would be like, ‘There’s no room for that. It has to be simple. It has to be easy. It has to be real.’ It was a constant reminder every day. If it started to feel imposed or weird or from ‘a galaxy far, far away,’ then we were doing the wrong thing.”
There’s an inherent realism in Andor that is so very unlike other fantastical Star Wars stories, a realism that means viewers naturally resonate with its story.
Andor Shows A New Way To Do Star Wars Stories
Luna’s comments come shortly after Gilroy himself described Andor as a huge gamble for Lucasfilm. According to Gilroy, Andor had to break Star Wars in order to reinvent it, hopefully creating what he described as a “new lane” for storytelling. It’s interesting to note there are strong thematic links between the grounded political nature of Andor and Star Wars: Visions season 2, an animated show that used the Star Wars galaxy as a canvas on which to paint lavish images of colonialism and imperialism. Lucasfilm is already traveling down the lane Gilroy and Luna have opened.
Andor serves as a reminder that the sandbox George Lucas created is vast enough to include a wide range of stories, not just tales of Jedi and the Force. This is all the more impressive given that — in true Star Wars fashion — the story has technically been told back to front. Viewers already know Cassian Andor’s fate, which was told in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Smart writing means that certain fate has only added to the drama of Andor, however — proving Lucasfilm made the right call commissioning this tremendous show.
Source: Variety
