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ruby-red-inky-blue · 2 days ago

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I've been thinking about that again lately - especially the point about Cassian being an unconventional male lead in the movie - and I think what annoys me so much about the Andor characterisation (besides how little there is of it sometimes) is that it reads like a character who was reconfigured for the male gaze in many ways.

Rogue One Cassian:

a guy who committed fully to a cause at a very young age, and was clearly destroying himself in the attempt to hang on to that idealism. Yes, that man killed people without flinching, and was clearly prepared to do it all over again, but he was also wracked with guilt over it

implied to be a good manipulator (Tivik, who is clearly very afraid, still agreed to meet him and give him a huge secret; he convinced Bodhi they'll make it off Scarif; holds good speeches; described as a great recruiter by his superiors in the additional publications)

but clearly winging it most of the time, and not often suave

no hint of being great with women (calling Jyn's commitment to the cause inadequate and privileged, trying to tell her what she is feeling, then returning and offering her an army of people willing to die for her is... inelegant as far as flirting goes tbh)

kept being one-upped by the female lead in physical fights

took orders readily, deferentially and silently, both from his CO and (gasp!) the female lead

there was no specific personal loss that had pushed him into caring, although he did tell Jyn she was "not the only one who lost everything", it was never specified if that made him pick up the fight or not

he was the organised stickler to Jyn's rebellious chaotic approach

he was largely a reactive character, shifted around by the plot and, most importantly, by following Jyn

failed his main assignment, not because anything out of his control went wrong, but because he couldn't bring himself to shoot Galen

his arc was relearning (or, possibly, learning for the first time) to assert his own judgement over his superiors, which is a storyline usually given to female characters

meanwhile, here is what Tony Gilroy saw in Cassian:

source: Vanity Fair

Couple things here.

"A perfect kind of spy" - yeah! But in a real-world sense, not a James Bond sense. Because James Bond is actually a really bad spy. Cool, but terrible. He leaves a trail of women he fucked whom he told secrets to and who can be used to manipulate or trace him, he tells everyone his government name for no reason, he is drunk, keeps killing people who could tell him stuff, and cannot stop drawing attention to himself. An actual good spy is unassuming and nonthreatening, and sure, charming and attractive doesn't hurt but not in a way that people will remember. A spy who is the hottest thing since sliced bread? Way too conspicuous. The Cassian we see in the movie defaults to make himself nonthreatening at every opportunity - making himself look goofy and clumsy ("oh no, my gloves!"), smiling, making himself smaller, letting himself get kidnapped with no earnest attempt to resist or retaliate.

He is not the perfect warrior. He is a good shot and appears to have an ungodly pain tolerance, but we never see him engage in violence in the way that "warrior" stereotypically implies. It is never implied he is adept at any strength-based combat and he will not get up close and personal. This man never beats up anyone, he is not reckless when outnumbered, and his main contribution to the final fight is drawing fire and covering the protagonist, and almost immediately getting hit.

"The perfect killer" who, again, had the perfect chance to execute a vital enemy target and didn't, simply because he emotionally could not do it. Great analysis, man, no notes!

I think the interpretation of "seductive" isn't wrong in regards to R1!Cassian, looking especially at his speeches in the latter half - except, of course, on Andor we end up with that being reflected both by Cassian being suddenly incredible at massive feats of manipulation (while being unable to lie to his mother or convince people to get off his back about the money he owes them, somehow), AND literally by Cassian being a flirt and womaniser. Which, again, really works against him being a good spy, and also goes against the characterisation of the movie. Sure, you could say he was weird around Jyn because he had a crush, or because he wasn't into her, but Cassian seemed so burned out most of the movie that I just can't picture him mustering the energy for any kind of hedonism.

The last bit of that quote is such an upsetting mischaracterisation of Cassian's final acts, and I really hope that's just because it was phrased weirdly. Because "How do you get to that place and then sacrifice yourself" implies that Cassian felt he was top of his game, and proud of it, and sacrifice was an active step he took in spite of that. Cassian visibly resented himself for his actions. He repeatedly put himself in harm's way with no hesitation and very little care for his life before the finale. Giving his life was not sacrificing something good for a win. Scarif was his redemption. This is very clearly stated in dialogue. Cassian viewed this victory as making things right with the world, and seemed mostly relieved to die on the beach. I don't understand how a writer could not get that.

But yeah, overall Cassian, while still a very tragic character (and still played by the man with the saddest eyes in the biz), has become way more of a male action hero type in Andor. The initial Han-Solo-esque blasé attitude and reluctance to fight, the mercenary mentality, the petty criminal background are all things typically associated with the Cool Tough Guy, traits which he emphatically did not have before. Also, I get that Cassian and his skillset would be a great asset to Luthen, but I feel like Cassian from Rogue One was emphatically not a guy who any recruiter ever treated like God's gift to the cause, and Luthen repeatedly makes the point that his own life and the invaluable imperial tech Cassian stole are worth the risk of recruiting... some thief who can lie okay? Luthen's early treatment of Cassian is oddly chosen-one coded, and I never felt like that was earned. But it makes Cassian look badass! Which was probably the main intention behind all that. And then the constant bitchiness about submitting to authority. I'm obviously not talking about the prison arc, I mean when he was receiving very necessary training on Aldhani or even when he has a go at Kleya for giving him bad intel before stealing the TIE in season 2. That is simply wildly out of character for the man we saw in Rogue One - but it is more palatable for the kind of male viewers who think masculinity is always asserting dominance. If your pov character can't be in command just yet, he can at least be bitching about the ones who are. And making him so slow to care for the broader cause makes it look like he's not ever really acting out of conviction so much as he seems to be avenging personal losses and harm to himself and people he personally knows. Which is also a much more traditional motivation for a male character.

We do still see Cassian flounder a lot, but in a way that makes him look much better than in Rogue One, because it's always established that he's a) new at this and b) even if he comes in prepped for a situation, it was always on a notably short deadline or with extra hurdles. He was brought into Aldhani three days before go time; they have to orchestrate the prison break with very limited amount of communication; he was ill-prepared for the theft of the TIE (and also apparently only there for a few hours? why not send him in for a few days, to watch other people fly the thing?); he had virtually no time to make any kind of plan before trying to extract his friends from the farm planet. R1!Cassian was much more reliant on prep and planning (the whole operation up until Jedha had clearly been planned for a long time), and was skilled at improvising when that plan - his plan - inevitably went sideways. In Andor, every fuck-up appears to be outside of his control, and he was mostly winging it anyway! Any success is therefore impressive and cool, and a dunk on all the other idiots who spent so long planning it.

The only truly dumb choice he makes is executing Skeen before he can prove to anyone that Skeen was going to betray them - and here we do see him be the cold killer that Gilroy seems to think he is! Because that was not ordered, did not further any cause but to satisfy his anger at being successfully lied to, and there was no shadow of self-defense in it. It's not necessarily a thing I can't see R1!Cassian doing, especially a younger version - but it does run counter to the portrayal we got, of a man who "did everything I did [...] for the Rebellion", who hated killing so much he eventually couldn't even do it when it did further the cause. And, crucially, Andor!Cassian never once seems to feel the slightest bit of guilt over the people he's killed so far - only people who got killed because of him or beside him, like Nemik or Kino, and even there guilt didn't seem to be the thing that lingers, he's mostly angry. Which is fair, both for the themes they're exploring and as a possible backstory for the character, but again, much more palatable to that certain male audience.

Lastly, this is even in the clothing! It pains me to do anything but rave about Andor's costuming because it is divine, but... they even dressed him kind of like a cowboy in his intro (see this post). R1!Cassian spent a large part of the movie in a floofy parka that his frame completely disappeared in, face haloed by soft fur, and was otherwise dressed pretty much in army fatigues (except for the Imperial uniform and the sexy black leather jacket in the intro, which might be where Gilroy pulled the inexplicable Bond vibes from??). Also, we get a shot of his ass but not of Jyn's, which is very funny but I don't know if I want to pretend this is a serious argument or not. Andor sees him in much more leather and suede in more muted colours, coarser materials, long, swooping open coats with a more classically adventure-hero type silhouette (when he gets to pick his own wardrobe, of course). And, of course, there's a shirtless scene, too.

so yeah, I know a lot of people will not vibe with this assessment because Cassian in Andor is still, unlike a lot of action leads written by men, not a creep or a misogynist. But they still retconned or reshaped a lot of the traits that made him so inadequate to a lot of male Star Wars fans in the movie, and as someone who thought that was very sexy of Cassian that's just such a bummer.

Nah I gotta say something.

After watching Rogue One all of the characters are amazing. I literally love them all. Some people saying Cassian was their favorite. I love him, he’s my blorbo.

And then Andor completely retconning his entire character, personality and background and everything we knew at all whatsoever, some people still say that this was why the SAME GUY was always the fave ???

I loved him because he was a refreshingly different male lead. Because he wasn’t some brooding loser but was intentional in being a leader within the rebellion no matter the costs. And then they made him out to be a reluctant cowboy?

I get liking both canons. I get still loving this new character and the old. I get trying to bridge the differences. But completely ignoring the fact that they changed his everything and acting like it was the same guy, it’s so sad seeing so many people never gave a shit at all in the first place when they claimed to. Maybe it’s just me being naive but that’s actually wild to me male characters can be completely contradicted and still be valued over their female counterparts. I actually hate y’all.

#yes i will still defend a film that does not pass the bechdel test as shockingly good at avoiding male gaze-type storytelling #andor is a very good show but. i remain bitchy about the fact that these two are completely different and i feel like i know why #obviously the greatest crime against feminism the show has committed is giving him jyn's backstory?? instead of making her the protagonist?#(this is a joke the fridging is a bigger problem but. it's not great)#i've been trying to actively ignore that fact but all the little things. still grate.#this #andor #andor spoilers #(not really but hey)#also i feel this is fair comment but also to be safe tagging this as #anti andor #?#tony gilroy #meta #sorry for hijacking your post for such a long rant lol

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ruby-red-inky-blue · 2 days ago

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Andor and character writing

First off: This is a plot-driven show, and that's a good thing. Especially with how Gilroy and Co. reimagined the character, this is not a subject that was made for a several-episode-long character study (and frankly, probably nothing in Star Wars really is). This isn't so much a gripe about a thing that I believe makes the show bad. It's a very good show, and Gilroy and his team's writing really shines in many parts of it - the clever but unambiguous integration of themes, the parallels between characters in different arcs, the political and logistical nitty-gritty are all outstanding.

But I do think sometimes the character-writing on the show takes a backseat in a way it didn't have to, and occasionally gets handwavy in ways that are in confusing contrast to the precision of the writing elsewhere - mostly, but not exclusively where Cassian is concerned.

1. Coherence

The Rogue One script has its flaws (user ruby-red-inky-blue admits through gritted teeth), but one thing it did incredibly well was give you characters that just immediately made sense. From the first, even with the sparse information you were given, you could immediately picture how their lives up to this point had gone, and their characterisation made sense for the life they had led. For Jyn, we were given a lot of quickly rattled-off exposition (which, yes, some might have found clunky), but it immediately made sense for the way she interacted with people and the actions she took: why she was so eager to get out of dodge, thinking she was about to be conscripted into the next pointless rebellion clusterfluck after Saw's rebels; why she was so irreverent and hostile to everyone - because she'd been around people like that, been one of them, and they had all let her down and hadn't even reached their goals doing it... I could go on. For others, like Bodhi or Baze, we got much less context, but it immediately made sense for them to be where they were: Bodhi, a young man from Jedha who'd gone into Imperial duty probably for the money or for an opportunity to become a pilot and see the universe, slowly but surely driven to a breaking point and immediately getting in way over his head when he went to Saw, because he had no idea what he was getting himself into. (This was also a clever characterisation beat for Galen, btw: He'd been an Imp or posing as one most of his life, and miscalculated, hard, on how reasonable his old buddy Saw would be, because he had no way of knowing how batshit insane the fight had driven him since they last met). Long story short: Everyone's mindset, behaviour, age and position in society was perfectly reasonable in relation to each other. Baze and Chirrut would have seemed weird if they had been really young; if someone like Bodhi had been played by an actor in his fifties, his behaviour would have seemed less intuitive. Same thing for Krennic: He was old enough to make his position in the Empire seem reasonable (he was ambitious, and worked his way up the ranks, but probably not smart enough to work his way up the ranks noticeably quickly, so he had to be middle-aged), but also just old enough to start getting that torschlusspanik going - if the big break in his career doesn't come soon, he'll be too old for it. He just makes sense.

Andor has characters like that, too, and I don't think it's a surprise that they're among the most popular standouts of the first season. Mon Mothma is very coherent like that, but she might be a special case since we knew so much about her position going in. But Luthen, Syril, Dedra, Maarva and Brasso also have this going for them. For example, Luthen is older than most of the characters, so he, like Maarva, actually remembers what the world was like before the Empire. He's also old enough to suggest that maybe he has lost someone or something and that loss has been allowed to fester into that rage and resolve he clearly has when we meet him. He's old enough to have made mistakes and learned from them, and also old enough to have built up his shop front to the point where we catch up with him, without that needing any extra explanation. And Brasso is a great example of a character who just makes sense even though we know next to nothing about him. He's from Ferrix, he works there, he seems community-minded and knows Cassian and Maarva well. That's all we get. And yet, it makes so much sense. He's that solid friend with a stable job, quiet and generous. He's old enough to have earned his position in the community. He never behaves in a way that would make it strange how universally beloved he seems to be on Ferrix. We also see how savvy he is with social complications when he makes up the alibi for Cassian - this is a man who gets people, and who will be able to defuse any beef someone else has with him. Everything about him makes sense.

Cassian, though... I don't know. So he was abducted from his home planet aged nine or so - old enough to remember it - and had to learn a whole new language and culture. This... doesn't seem to inform his actions much, short of maybe earning him a reputation for being a quick study. He took action against the Empire when Clem died - possibly also influenced by the loss of his home planet and first family - went to jail, left at sixteen to fight on Mimban for six months, then got out of dodge, disillusioned. Okay. So why do we meet him ten years later, apparently completely inexperienced with how to go about looking for his sister? What has he been doing those ten years? Why would he not start looking for her sooner? Did Maarva forbid it? The Cassian we meet in Andor doesn't seem like a guy who would listen to that. The womanising trait is also a little weird to me - I guess it could be a thing of wanting to belong, or commitment issues, which would make sense, but the show doesn't tell us why he's doing it, only that he's doing it (see below on that issue). I guess we're just saying if you look like that, you'd make the most of it. He is a beautiful man, I guess that checks out. But it's not very meaty, characterisation-wise, and it gives us nothing re: his background. The only thing that seems coherent to me in Cassian's early characterisation is that he seems on the outskirts of the community by his own doing - it makes sense that he would self-sabotage a little, maybe harbouring a lingering doubt that he belongs or fits in. But the chronic unreliability they saddle him with, while making a lot of sense for his backstory, is really confusing to square with where he's going - that's not a trait you can just choose to let go off whenever, but he seemingly does (see below for more on that). I also feel like his piloting skills are really a lot better than they should be considering his background, but one could argue maybe most ships really are pretty easy to fly or at least all very similar (and they did hilariously refute that point in Season 2 so I will shut up about that a little more). And maybe most prominently, I feel like they gave him no reason to be as much of a smooth-talker as he is. What about living with this very quiet man and this very terse, upfront woman in this sleepy scrapping town made him so incredibly good at manipulation - and yet, why has this not resulted in him getting himself in a little better position somewhere, or at least keeping him out of trouble more? I get him being a good liar, to some extent, since Maarva had him hide his origin his entire life, and because that feels like something that can just be natural aptitude. But keeping him so perfectly separate from any spy experience for this much of his life makes his skill at charming people somewhat confusing. Because being able to talk someone into giving you a two-day extension on the debt you owe them is one thing, but suddenly giving speeches and talking guys into a prison break is a very different beast.

2. Consistency

This all kind of dovetails into my second gripe: The character progressions on the show can feel inorganic. People will suddenly change a thing about themselves in a very short time or for a seemingly small reason, and the show doesn't address it. I've gone on at length about how strange I find Cassian going from a fuck-you-don't-tell-me-what-to-do attitude to the incredibly patient, obedient soldier we meet at the end of his life in only a few short years. I'm aware this is probably the most subjective gripe I have about the show, a lot of people will find changes very logical that I didn't like and vice versa. I expect to grapple more with the time skips this season than most people. But yeah, right off the bat, the skip from 1.12 to 2.01 felt bigger than it should have been, one year on.

First of all – we get no context on Dedra suddenly not only deigning to regard Syril as a person worth two minutes of her attention, but to actually be in a relationship with him? Sharing her home with him? Meeting his mother? I really hope there is some big dramatic endgame she’s running here, because if not, that feels like a massive leap to me.

Similarly, looking at how he talks to the woman at the test facility and later the guys on Yavin, Cassian has gone lightyears closer to the man we meet on Kafrene in one year. And, again, knowing exactly what to say to any given person to get them to do what you want takes a lot of experience, and I don’t really think one year would do the trick. So yeah, he seems like a wildly advanced spy – and yet, at the same time, everything he does in 2.03 is so stupid. It’s human! But it wildly undermines that incredibly well-written scene at the end of last season. “Kill me, or take me in” is not the statement of a man who’s still planning to go home to his family at the end of the week! It implies that he will live or die for this rebellion from this point forward. And yet, three episodes later, Cassian, devoted spy and public enemy n° 4, not only seems to be making regular visits to Bix, Brasso and Co., but they’re using his real name in front of outsiders. And when he hears that the Imps are bearing down on the planet for an inspection, he takes the invaluable ship he just stole for the rebels that they risked multiple lives trying to obtain, and rushes in with that flashy flashy ship to rescue his buddies?? If they hadn’t already been in trouble, they would have immediately been the target of a fully-fledged manhunt the moment anyone saw that ship in the sky. Like, my guy, not only are you making shit worse for your friends, you are risking the ship your rebellion needs and your own capture in the process – which would not only risk handing them a year’s worth of spy information, but also a huge propaganda win and a massive blow to Luthen’s operation. Why would you do that. Why would you not at least land somewhere and steal a slightly less conspicuous ship.

And the annoying thing is, this could be fascinating characterisation – but because of the structure of the season, we are not going to sit with this! We won’t be able to explore this as the espionage clusterfuck that it is, and the ramification for Cassian’s journey to become the Rebellion’s model spy boy. I don’t think we’re even meant to see it as a mistake on his part! The narrative excuses him – he was already almost too late, any extra second might have killed Bix and Wilmon – but it runs so counter to where we last left him, and now we’ll swan off from this again, and he’ll probably be back to hypercompetent spy mode. His competence was a great trait for Rogue One-Cassian, and watching him fuck up on the way there would be interesting. But as beautifully consistent as the overall plot is, Gilroy is clearly not as bothered making his main character equally internally consistent. Cassian oscillates between competence and incompetence when the plot needs it – and yes, people fuck up, but this is a story. It would be nice to feel like we’re watching a character being formed, instead of individual traits of a character randomly blinking in and out of existence like this.

3. Motivation

The Andor writers are great at showing you what drives people to stand up to injustice, in all its nuances on the spectrum of selflessness to selfishness and greater good to individual freedom. It’s what makes this show soar.

Andor doesn’t seem to be invested in giving that same justification to most of the interpersonal relationships, though. A few examples: We learn that Cassian and Bix were an item once, and that she broke up with him but they’re still fond of each other. Great, we love a non-toxic exes relationship! But… why did they like each other? Did Bix like that Cassian was a bit of a scoundrel? Could make sense, her rebound with the very down-to-earth Timm might imply as much. But the show doesn’t really show us any concrete reasons. We get allusions to their shared past, their comfortable bickering, the joke about Cassian climbing her dad’s fence. But we don’t really learn why he liked her. His relationship to Brasso is also a little underexplored: Brasso is very warm and very lenient with Cassian, like a caring older brother in many ways, and Cassian seems to lean on him in a way that seems like he’s done that many times. But that’s really all we get. Why is Brasso cutting Cassian so much slack? How come he feels so responsible for Maarva, seemingly even more than Bix?

Maarva and Cassian is much more intuitive, because Cassian was a child in need (at least in Maarva’s eyes, and then in fact when she took him away from home) – it’s understandable how they’d sort of imprint on each other, and yet also understandable that Cassian might harbour some resentment, which we see in the way he seems to idolise Clem over her sometimes. Theirs is maybe the most fleshed-out relationship Cassian has, and it stands on its own in ways that his other relationships really don’t – and yet, there’s still a lot of telling instead of showing, because the plot overtakes them. That’s fine, it’s even making a point of how the struggle is taking things away even before people die! But when this keeps happening, it makes the characters lack depth in a way that is a bit of a shame.

Vel and Cinta live in an in-between point, because we do get some very salient points about what Vel might see in Cinta when Cinta snipes at her about sort of play-acting as a rebel: Vel admires Cinta; she’s who she would like to be, clearly ashamed of her privilege and alienated by her culture. But we never really learn what Cinta sees in her, although I have some hope this might come up this season.

With Mothma and Luthen, it’s less noticeable – Mothma’s family is a central plot point, and Luthen is so compulsively secretive that it would feel weird for him to have any obvious, deeply explored relationships. He and Kleya are also underexplored, but here it feels deliberate. You can see how they meant to juxtapose Cassian, initially from a tightly-knit community with a lot of strings still attached (friends, mother, ex-girlfriend), and Mr. “I burn my future for a sunrise I will never see” – rebels at different stages, and Luthen’s isolation foreshadowing Cassian’s own. But that would have worked so much better if we were given a little more depth in the relationships! Rogue One took a hard show, don’t tell approach to relationships, and it went over a lot people’s heads, but I think they did a much better job in that script making the relationships feel real. Cassian saw himself in Jyn – his own doubts in the cause, the toll it took on them both, the resentment, the fight. He looked clearly struck by her refusal of the call in the first half, and you could tell how seeing her devote herself to the cause fully reinvigorated him, too. It was also very briefly but deftly implied how he related to Bodhi: he admired the bravery of this very overwhelmed young man who took all the guilt about his past actions and did something with it (Bodhi’s comment about how Galen said he could make it right if he was brave now is later mirrored in Cassian’s hangar speech). Even Draven and Cassian had implied depth although we were never told anything about what or who they were to each other short of commanding officer and soldier – their face journeys when Draven relayed the order about Galen (implying a very deep mutual understanding and some guilt on both their parts), later Draven doing the strategically idiotic move of trying to delay their one chance of taking out Galen from the air just to try and get Cassian to safety first. The movie took more care to show why people felt connected to each other than to define what that connection really was. This wouldn’t work for a show, because of the longer runtime, but it would have been nice to get a little more why.

(This can work for spy shows, too, even characters you want to keep more ambiguous. This post is already way too long so I won’t go into detail, but The Americans was great at making very believable relationships between very shady people.)

Also, I don't know where this goes, but I also think it's a real shame that the connections between the remaining Ferrix guys weren't fleshed out at all. And while I think it's good that they went for absolute unflinching realness with the farm planet storyline, I would love to learn more about Bix that isn't "fixes stuff" and "massive trauma", please?

Tl;dr: I’m really hyped for more intricate spy on spy shenanigans, fantastic themes and political intrigue, but I’m seeing all my gripes on how Gilroy writes characters overall and Cassian in particular staying pretty consistent. This season will feel very rushed to me. That’s probably a me problem; it always annoys me when narratives are so plot-driven that the characterisation actively suffers for it, and I really think there were ways around it in a script this good. But hey, we’ll see. Maybe they’ll surprise me.

I will say, though, that I will send this incredibly overlong essay to anyone who brings up the “Tony Gilroy saved Rogue One” thing to me, because the characterisations in Rogue One were one of my favourite things about the movie and he is clearly not invested in that as a writer, and I really don’t believe he had much of a hand in that. And, even more honestly, even if all these things improve 100 percent in the next arc... that still ain't my boy! But at least do well with the versions you've created, Tony.

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