Video

'Better Call Saul' is my personal favourite, but 'Andor' is up there for sure.

@@That0therGeorge Don’t forget about Cory in the House.

Thank you so much for the comment, very nice of you to say. I'm happy that you were able to get something out of my analysis.

2017 was a pretty excellent year for movies to be fair; Baby Driver, Logan, Good Time, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, A Ghost Story, You Were Never Really Here, War for the Planet of the Apes etc.

I will say that I personally found 'Andor' even more enjoyable as a completed first season than watching the individual episodes from week-to-week. When watching it for the third time for this project, I watched it in 4 separate parts (for obvious reasons). So even though I didn't agree with a lot of people at the time, I can understand why people didn't connect with it initially. Unfortunately, that is the downside to reviewing media right after it comes out as oppose to letting it breathe.

Yes and no. I've very recently re-watched both shows and to some extent I appreciate them even more because I know where is all leads to.

Yeah that first one is from the episode 'Inflatable', such a funny and creative way of presenting Jimmy's clever ways to get fired.

Hello there, thank you for the comment. The Scottish highlands are beautiful. Thanks for adding about the real world correlation, I did not know that.

You're welcome, Mr Maguire.

Yep, everyone put their all into this series.

It’s different class. Just learned the Aldanhi heist was filmed about 40 mile away. From Glasgow , Scotland and I never knew it. I’m trying to organise a trip for my 55th birthday in June.

@@user-ly5qi9zb5t It's a beautiful location. Hope you have a great birthday trip there, you'll have to let me know what it's like.

I'm not sure which arc is my favourite. They're all great, but also very different.

@@That0therGeorge They were all really good, but I think the prison arch was the best.

@@justgaming7679 Fair enough. I know the fan favourite episode seems to be 'One Way Out'.

Completely agreed. I think 'Breaking Bad' is actually my favourite of those black and white episodes, but 'Nippy' was brilliant as well.

Thank you! Yeah, I really wanted to take the time to breakdown that opening scene in 'A New Hope' to show that the Empire was competent in classic Star Wars. Most people tend to reference 'Return of the Jedi' to highlight the Empire's incompetency, but to be honest, that is one of many reasons why that film is the weakest of the original trilogy. Appreciate the feedback. It depends on the topic at hand really. This current project I'm working on is about 6,000 words thus far and it's only covering 1 episode of a TV series. This 'Andor' project was about 3,700. Point being that some topics I have more to say about than others. For this one, some people were disappointed that I didn't talk about Mon Mothma, but the issue is that as brilliant as her character is, I just didn't have that much to say about her. So thank you for the feedback, I shall definitely keep it in mind, but at the same time I don't think it would be best for me to stretch a topic for the sake of it. I actually spoke to MauLer years ago and watched EFAP for a while after. I tend not to watch them nowadays more so as a time thing than anything else, but I was glad to hear they liked 'Andor'.

I love re-listening to the OST.

That's fine if you feel that way. Personally, I really liked the juxtaposition. It goes to show that there are still good people following their traditions buried within the madness going on in the galaxy.

Same.

Yeah, 'Andor' is very mature and is everything I want to see from a science fiction series. And the detective murder noir story is definitely an idea I'm on-board with.

It was a side so many people wanted explored, but they put it off for a while.

I actually really liked 'Paladins'. I assume I was just making a dumb joke.

Exactly. I like 'Return of the Jedi' a lot, but that is not a flawless film and the stormtroopers being incompetent is one of the criticisms I have.

I would onboard with this.

Kylo Ren/Villains: honestly in terms of character design I don't have a lot of problems with Kylo Ren. Now he is kind of a baby but over all a sith, the grandson of Vader, who idolizes his grandfather when he was still dark and is swayed to the dark side after losing trust in his parents and uncle who failed him and eventually realizes his mistake and finds redemption by helping to take down his master. Nothing but thumbs up from me. I love complex characters and redemption. However (yes there is a however), his redemption arc was sloppy at best. This is character building 101 here. If a character redeems themselves (or betrays everyone (*Anakin*)) we need to see their actions leading up to that point and see what causes the change to find redemption or betray everyone. And this is especially the case with the most evil or most good characters. Now usually with the most black and white characters, this act is also usually their final act. The best case study of this is of course Darth Vader himself. One of the worst villains in history sacrificed himself to save his son and destroy his master there by redeeming himself and bringing balance to the force. But in order for this to be a true redemption it unfortunately had to be his final act. Do you really think darth vader, the man who helped order genoc*de against the jedi order among countless other worlds who brought about an era of fear and darkness would ever be trusted again or allowed to teach jedi or be around younglings. Now maybe if he was more gray this could work, but we never really see that Vader has doubt in his actions. And this leads me to my next point about more gray villains. Gray villains have more options when it comes to their redemptions (or betrayals if they are hero characters), because they have doubts. Here are two character redemptions examples. The first is a star wars character called Alexsandr Kallus, or Agent Kallus from Star Wars Rebels. For those who don't know him and are too lazy to look him up on wookieepedia, here's a quick summary. He was imperial captain who helped immorally keep order even helping commit genoc*de and condone tort*re methods who began to see the evil of the empire, going so far as to become an inside agent for the rebellion and eventually fully defecting when he was caught. He was originally a very dark villain and he could've been another Thrawn or Vader, but the important part that separates him from the worst of the worst villains is that he saw the errors of his way, and even better he acted on that doubt and began doing the right thing. And here's an example of the best redemption arc of all time, Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender. You had the main villain who persistently tried to kill the hero to gain redemption from his father who later understood that he didn't need his fathers favor even joining the hero to help take down his father. A villian who, by all rights, should've been the final boss, understood the errors of his ways and changed. So keep this in mind as I go back to Kylo Ren: black and white villains can only redeem themselves through their last act, but villains with light or doubt in them can find long term redemption. The sequels portrayed Kylo Ren as a black and white villain who was able to redeem himself in the long term. I know now many of you are like “no kylo was good just misunderstood you're wrong and stupid and i hate you.” No dude. They portray Kylo as a whiny selfish drama queen, he was never good. “Oh but he killed Snoke.” He didn't kill Snoke to be a good person and do the right thing, he killed Snoke to take his place. “Oh but he had doubts and would've left it all behind for rey.” Well first off they should've never had a weird romance. It was toxic af to bonded through the force and is honestly kinda lame, and I think adding romance when it isn’t necessary just distracts from the film and can even change a characters personality creating contradiction (like trying to convince the audience he was secretly good though poor romance when really he was just manipulative jerk). And also Kylo didn't want to turn to the light; he wanted Rey to be his dark queen and rule with him. Kylo Ren had no doubts or guilt about his actions and yet they tried to give a long term redemption. “Oh but kylo died to save himself to save rey so she could defeat palpy.” Fine technically you're right, but you're also wrong. His entire weak moment where he goes to the light fully implies that he planned to live and do right after. Kylo Ren should've either never gone to the light, helping Palpatine to the end and being a villain (he doesn't exactly have a son he wants to save and sacrifice himself for) or he should've had his redemption much earlier (end of movie 8 or start of movie 9) and we should've seen the conflict in him from the start to make that redemption believable. And speaking of villains. Palpatine/Cloning: we all know that "somehow palpatine returned" might be one of the worst ideas Disney had. Now before I get into the bad I would like to start with the only good idea from this. As a general concept I think a theoretically immortal villain is a really interesting concept. How do you defeat someone who can just die and start up a new clone and keep powering through. By the skin of your teeth and a lot of luck, which is what a lot of star wars is based on. But the execution of this idea was just terrible. Assuming Kylo Ren redeemed himself and is not the main villain, then this idea would have needed to be introduced in movie 7 where the villain dies and is reborn again so we can see the again once or twice episode 8 and episode 9 is about finding all the clones and facilities and destroying them insuring the sith is really gone while everyone else strikes the final blow/damaging blow to the first order ensuring their downfall. But this was introduced in the dumpster fire called the rise of skywalker. And not only was it introduced late with no room to develop but they picked the worst villain. And worst of all, I know exactly why they picked Palpatine. The executives sat down to write the plot and they said “oh no we've just killed two out of three of our most beloved characters with the intention of killing the last, how are we going to rake in the money and nostalgia. Omg Ian McDiarmid is still alive,” and I'm sure you can figure out the rest from there. This is just so bad. You know what this means. This means Vader died for nothing. His sacrifice in stopping the empire was for nothing. He didn't beat Palpy, he just delayed him for like 30 years. Sure he still saved Luke but he didn't stop his master. It's just like the stupidest idea and it was so sloppy. I know The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch are fixing this right now, but still. It shouldn't have been Palpatine. It should've been Snoke. Maybe he was a force sensitive child who grew up in a era without the order (empire) and eventually found the unfinished plans to make force sensitive clones from an ancient sith (palpatine is actually fine here) and finished them, becoming a sith lord following the siths works and even disfiguring himself in a sith experiment eventually grooming and taking in kylo ren and attempting to create an empire with himself as the immortal force sensitive leader. Did we get that? No. We just got call backs and money. pt 3 below below

Luke Skywalker/failed Jedi order: SIgh. I'm not against the idea of the new jedi order failing, but they didn't do it correctly. Honestly the thing I hate most about this idea is how they change Luke's character. Like am I really to believe that Luke Skywalker really tried to kill his nephew because of a feeling? That's not really in character. Now I do like that he's secluded himself and abandoned the force and is full of doubt once again (much like in episode 5), but I just feel like the execution of his self-inflicted reclusion wasn't very well done. Luke does not strike me as the type to attack a child under any circumstance. “Oh but he had doubts and was scared, it was the darkside talking, a moment of weakness, stupid.” Oh really. You're telling me Luke was irrational to the point where he tried to kill his nephew. Boo. If Luke did seclude himself, it should've been for a different reason. Maybe Kylo did turn on everyone after being seduced by the darkside and Luke feels like he failed to save his students and Kylo (much like how kenobi probably felt after order 66). Maybe there was a tragedy resulting in Luke being unable to save the order he was creating (maybe from Boba taking some revenge teeheehee). But as long as it doesn't really conflict with Luke's character as much then it doesn't really matter. And then there’s the idea of the origins of the jedi order. Now don’t get me wrong, I love pointless worldbuilding and I like seeing the entirety of the history and complicated layout even if it contributes absolutely nothing to the plot or world. And while on the whole having the whole origins of the jedi order wasn’t a bad idea, they didn’t really use it properly. If Luke had maybe retreated and became like a monk and devoted himself to the origins of the jedi philosophy and teachings, or maybe gathering intel on how to create a new jedi order from scratch then the first temple, or whatever it was called, would fit in really well. But Luke wasn’t. He was just like a bitter old man camping out in some ruins. And sure Luke being a bitter old man is fine but why would he go back to what is basically the equivalent of Jerusalem when he renounced his religion (im agnostic I have literally no clue if that is the correct analogy). If he’s going to be a bitter old man who hides from the world, as cliché as it is, I’d rather see him hiding out on Tatooine being a hermit or moisture farmer. In the movies there isn’t like a huge point to him really being there except for being like a cool setting. And even though it's a cool spot and some neat worldbuilding, it just doesn’t work and just contradicts Lukes character and reasons for being there, especially since he’s not a jedi anymore to the point where he cut himself off from the force. So yeah, Ahch-to (bless you (we didn't even get that joke in the movie and its such delicious low-hanging fruit)) is a good and pretty interesting place but was overall just kinda wasted in the movie. And if they really wanted to add it then maybe Rey and/or Finn and/or Leia pick up Luke from his little hermit shack on Tatooine (if you really want the nostalgia then it could be Obi-Wan’s old place) and he takes them there to test Rey and tell her about the failings of the jedi order and/or himself. But otherwise if he is there, then it would make more sense for him to be a super religious monk, maybe even to the point where he’s trying to become just like the prime jedi, or he’s desperately searching for a way to make a jedi order that won’t fail again. Starkiller Base: It’s just a version of the Death Star and we’ve already seen that. I honestly don’t have a super great idea on what an alternative could be. Maybe something more suns were rather than a weapon, starkiller works by strip mining and consuming suns to turn it into raw materials or fuel or something for the first order. It is a destructive way to destroy an entire system because any populated planet kinda needs a sun to survive, but I don’t know. I just don’t have a good one off the top of my head. pt 4. below below below

Movie 9: Everyone knows this move was a mess. It was a burning dumpster fire filled with ideas for a trilogy shoved into a single movie. If you ask me, much of this came from changing the villain at the last moment (see above where I talk about villains and Palpatine). I don’t really know how to save it and I’ll just give a quick thing about different concepts I liked and didn’t like. And don't get me wrong, all the movies had their flaws, but this in peticular was just a mess because of the timing and the surplus of ideas that were just thrown in with no development. -The first is Exegol. The planet vibe was pretty cool with the black obelisks and random bursts of lightning. But it’s also pretty unnecessary in terms of a location. We already have Korriban/Moraband and if they wanted to do a whole sith empire and seeing dead sith lords thing, then Korriban is a much better location to go to because it has all of that and I like connecting legends to canon whenever I can. -Hux. I don’t have any really strong opinions about him because he was the non force sensitive version of Kylo, and just like Kylo, his turn to the light side is completely unbelievable (see above where I talk about villains and redemption especially with Kallus). -Pasaana. The idea that they just stumble onto the festival that happens every 42 years is bad and lazy writing. Maybe once a year is more believable but still. There's not really a way to fix this unless the characters are prepared or knew about it ahead of time and did little side missions (like finding Luke or finding a code breaker or whatever it was in movie 8) with a defined ok we'll all be at this location on this date. -Force healing. I actually think force healing could be a thing, but I do not think it should work to the extreme that Rey uses. If force healing is a thing it’s more like a jedi uses it on themself to keep from dying or to recover faster from injuries and is a pretty passive skill to the point where it's usually one of the first things younglings are taught. So for example, let's say a jedi got stabbed in the leg and the bone broke as well. Force heal would be used to keep the jedi from bleeding to death (it wouldn’t be infinite, but they could stay alive longer than a normal person and it's so they can get help faster) and let's say it takes them 5 weeks for a regular dude to heal the broken bone, but a jedi would do it in like 3 weeks (of course this is without bacta). Maybe like the most powerful or the most skilled jedi in the halls of healing could heal someone else, but its not to the degree we see in this movie, and it would be more like scratch or helping them stay alive a little longer for help to arrive, but that would have to be pretty advanced skill, and the only character that might pull it off in this trilogy is Luke and that’s it. -Force lightning. Yeah we already know disney messed canon and how the force works but I’m still going to say it anyways. You can’t use force lightning unless you’re a sith and your alignment is firmly dark, which Rey isn’t so even if maybe some skills are more hereditary (which it isn't but you could also say luke's intuitions while flying is similar to anakins), force lightning is firmly off her skillset unless she changed sides. -The dagger. Yeah, once again we all know this wasn’t really a good idea. But I’ll talk about the death star part later and I want to talk about c3p0 and the sith language. Overall it's not a great idea but I have work around I’ve been tinkering with and I finally have a reason to share it. So the reason c3p0 has to reboot after speaking sith is because there’s a ban on it. Let me explain. So a long time ago the sith empire and jedi had this war. It ended with the Jedi winning and the old republic reforming into the galactic republic. But afterwards there was this huge fear of the sith coming back to the point where the galactic republic put a ban on the sith language so people going to the planets in the sith empire couldn’t translate the writings and potentially use their philosophies and attempt to remake the sith empire. And they did this in two ways. They basically destroyed all records of translations and dictionaries and they stopped putting the sith language in translator droids. But obviously there were a lot of translator droids made before then with sith written into them. And to counter this all translator droids were legally required to get an update where if their master wanted them to speak sith, the droid's memory would reset and would force the droid to turn themselves in and report their master for wanting to hear the banned language. C3p0 was one of those droids and was destroyed at some point before Anakin Skywalker found his translator that still had sith written into it and put him back together. And since at the time there was no republic he just rebooted with a memory wipe. That’s it. Just another work around I made. -Poe’s backstory thing. Yeah this wasn’t a bad idea, but overly squashed and grossly underdeveloped. -Kef Bir. If the ruins of the death star were on any planet, they should’ve been on Endor, but you know how it is by now, we need that cool flashy visual and nostalgia and the idea of an ancient dagger fighting perfectly with like 30 year old ruins is silly. The best thing they could've done was maybe have Luke dig through the ruins because he knew where the emperor's room had been but even that's bad so, thumbs down. And pretty much everything else is mentioned somewhere else on this huge muliti part note. And those are kind of the biggest ones I can think of off the top of my head. Now obviously there are a lot of problems, but many of the other ones can be worked around or edited without changing too much, assuming the idea was developed more thoroughly in the movies or could fit into any of the numerous ideas I have listed. And sorry for the censorship, youtube apparently doesn't like people saying bad words and i don't know which word it was that pissed them off when i wrote this a few days ago, so I just did all the bad ones and it took so much editing :( yo fr how did this get so long. im legitimately sorry for anyone who read this whole thing. i didnt mean this i swear. i got lost in the sauce

Bad, not mad. Dam mobile device won’t let me edit

Haha, I assume when you say "plants vs zombies" you mean 'Garden Warfare'? That was a great game as well.