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Comment by Spooky23

7 days ago

Andor succeeded despite the bureaucracy porn. Good stories are universal. You need to care about the protagonists.

The exposition is important, but doesn’t drive success. The best example of that is the original Star Wars. Contrast Star Wars to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress — which inspired many aspects of Star Wars. Essentially the same story with different framing. Both are still excellent films.

Shitty sequels or in-universe works focus on the exposition. The Book of Boba Fett is probably the best example of this. Watching some dude slow walk through the desert to waste my time and engage in some inane plot that made no sense made me actively not give a fuck and turn it off. Cool universe. Bad TV.

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Spooky23

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watwut  7 days ago

> Good stories are universal. You need to care about the protagonists.

This believe in one script that rules them all is why writing in American movies became boring and predictable. They did found that universal script with predictably likable protagonists that always win. It just got repetitive and boring.

arbitrary_name  6 days ago

Andor succeeded BECAUSE of the bureaucracy porn.

  • jiggawatts  6 days ago

    “Thesis?”

    is one of the best quotes from that show, and could occur only because of the bureaucracy porn. It wouldn’t be the same show if it didn’t show the impersonal system talking about rebels like they’re maths problems to solve, to eliminate like an unnecessary variable from an equation.

dmonitor  6 days ago

A big reason BoBF is so bad is because the exposition it focuses on is fucking lame as hell. It was also contradictory to the character's premise, a bounty hunting nomad deciding to settle down and become crime lord of bumfuck nowhere is the opposite of what his character arc should be.

mpalmer  7 days ago

Different points of comparison though. I'm not trying to hold up Andor against its betters, but its contemporaries.

anonymars  6 days ago

> Andor succeeded despite the bureaucracy porn.

I am not sure what specifically you're referring to, but take this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKl0F640914

A master class in gripping tension, moreover one that--like Breaking Bad--puts you in the awkward position of rooting for the bad guy. Because, as you say, we care about the protagonists, and in a way she is one.

And then in Season 2 when Krennic is talking to Meero? (towards the end - I am deliberately keeping it vague for those who haven't watched yet)

Meanwhile I thought the beginning of Season 2 was by far the weakest.

But yeah. Book of Boba Fett was bottom of the barrel. It feels like in an alternate universe he would have been the main character of The Mandalorian, and BoBF would not have existed.

I'm not sure just why it was so bad, maybe like late Game of Thrones it's obviously lazy, but contrasting with the scene above, at some level you have to care about the character and start to identify with them, insomuch as you become invested in them succeeding in their task: their goals become your surrogate goals. What was Boba Fett's goal and why should we care?

Contrast with Meero the spy hunter. Meanwhile Boba Fett was a crime lord who didn't do crime and constantly changed his mind to whatever the other person suggested instead of his original thoughts and plans.