Who can take Star Wars seriously after watching Andor – the recent spin-off series on DisneyPlus that has received across-the-board praise and set the internet alive with excited discussion? I posed this question recently on Threads and received the response from a friend: You took Star Wars seriously?
Fair enough, perhaps. But my point was that Andor took Star Wars to another level. With exceptional writing, strong characters, and incredibly tight plotting, will we ever see anything of its like again in this particular far-away/long-time-ago galaxy? We’ll have to see.
As a prequel to the movie Rogue One, the writers knew exactly where the story would end. And what an ending it is. That got me thinking: perhaps this was an important ingredient in its tight planning.
Another great recent example is Better Call Saul. Who would have bet that a prequel to Breaking Bad would receive as much – if not more – praise than the revered original series? Not me, that’s for certain.
Again, the question remains: does having the exact destination in mind help with crafting a plot and character arc that deliberately takes a character’s persona from A to B? It almost sounds like maths: here is our endpoint; we have two series of twelve episodes to work with; where can we start, and what major milestones do we need to introduce to get the character from A to B?
[Note: I’m hyper-aware this overly simplifies the effort and hard work of the writing teams behind both programmes.]
Thinking about it from a creator’s perspective, it’s an interesting consideration: how many books, films, and television programmes actually start with the destination in mind – and more so, actually start with a very clear and exact vision of how the story ends?
One notable example that didn’t was Lost. A key criticism of that series, which started off fantastically, was the lack of resolution to the many mysteries introduced, and that the ending was disappointing. Effectively, it started strongly but didn’t have the end in sight.
The more I think about it, the more this makes sense. Caveats are that care must be taken not to force the story too much and not to lose some of the organic elements of story development. Also, not all prequels work out: Episodes I to III of Star Wars certainly did not receive the praise of Andor, although one could argue the core elements of the story were sound – and maybe, with a bit less CGI and fewer annoying characters, things might have been a bit better.
Footnote: The title of this post is a beautiful song by Devotchka, from the album of the same name, which I recently re-discovered. You may recognise it from movies and video games, but I heartily recommend a listen to the original (and the whole album, for that matter).
