I mean, at it's core Star Wars is a rebellious narrative, and whether it's for children or not, the children have grown up and still look at Star Wars as a typology that doesn't always unpack the grim realities of war and rebellion.
All I can say is that I don't think that's something
Star Wars should do. I think
Star Wars has a few particular narrative conceits that constitute its essence, and one of them is that it doesn't get too deep into the grim reality.
Star Wars is at its heart a fantasy for children, and I disagree with attempts to make it more sophisticated because I get frustrated at the tendency to "adult-ize" children's franchises (at least in canonical installments -- I don't care about an obviously alternate version like
Velma).
And while I believe strongly in stories for stories sake, I think installments like Andor are fine because it's not the whole world. It would be one thing if all of Star Wars media, or Star Trek media, were consumed by one approach.
I suppose what it boils down to is that I don't think
Star Wars should be a big, sprawling, ongoing franchise with lots of nooks and crannies (except for the Expanded Universe novels that everyone else can safely ignore). I think it should be a much more limited thing consisting of a few movies and a few TV shows that maintain a consistent set of creative conceits (even if those movies are themselves much bigger cultural events than other franchises' installments).
But, ultimately this is a sidebar. The real issue is not, "Should
Star Wars do a sophisticated show for adults?" but, rather, "Does
Andor deserve the critical respect it's received?" One can disagree with a premise and still respect the work for how it executes that premise. Whether or not I think
Andor should have been set in the canonical
Star Wars universe, it was, and it executed its premise extremely well.
Andor is a sophisticated work of art that deserves the respect it's getting.
i think star trek brand is intellectually more highly regarded than star wars,
I think you are vastly over-stating the intellectualism of
Star Trek. I love ST, but most of it is thoroughly middlebrow.
however we have not hard intellectual star trek in a long time not since Enterprise.
You mean the show with the sexy green women who make men so horny they obey the green women's every command? The one where the evil lizard men want to blow up the Earth because reasons? And the alien space Nazis want to change history? The one where the show periodically stopped the narrative so that its actors could rub baby oil on one-another in their underwear?
C'mon, man. ENT was hardly "intellectual."
As for Andor, yes the show is far superior to SNW with better quality writing. better acting and production value.
I mean,
Andor and
Strange New Worlds are doing completely different things, so I don't really think it makes sense to say either one has "better" writing or acting. They have different creative goals and different styles of writing and acting are appropriate to different creative goals, and they both execute their creative goals extremely well.
I reject the idea that
Andor has better production value. Both have excellent production value, but you can also see where their budgets still had some limitations. (The buildings on Ferrix in particular feel very limited by the budget; similarly, you could literally see the Ukrainian flag in the "alien" riot footage in the SNW pilot.)
Disney can afford the honesty with Andor. that is the difference with disney and paramount, paramount cant afford to be really honest because they need SNW to succeed more than disney needs Andor.
However this may give a clue on how low the ratings of SNW may be, if Andor is..was the lowest viewed star wars show but it is still likely getting better ratings than SNW.
I mean, ultimately both Disney and Paramount have been losing money on their respective streaming services. The question is whether or not those initial losses will grow into profitability after they've each built up enough of an archive and schedule of ongoing shows as to attract a sustainable number of subscribers. That's yet to be seen for both.
Not only does it not give us a clue about something in which I have no vested interest but it doesn't even concern me.
The numbers are strong enough to make Season 2 and pour money into it. That tells you all you need to know.
Well, yes and no. The various streaming services for the past few years have been, essentially, a bubble -- with studios pouring money into their streamers at an initial loss in an attempt to build up enough of an archive and enough of a schedule of ongoing new stuff as to attract enough subscribers to become popular and therefore profitable. We're starting to see that bubble burst in some places -- hence the Great Purge over on HBO Max and its possible collapse. Paramount's put a lot of money into its
Star Trek shows since ST fans tend to be a very dedicated audience base and they want to keep Trekkies subscribing all year round. The question is whether or not the combination of reliable Trekkie subscribers and the general audience subscriber base is going to be large enough for Paramount to keep sustaining the losses it has with Paramount+.
