"Andor"

"Andor" has gotten tremendous praise for being a powerful drama.  And it is.  There are speeches.  Lots of speeches.  Powerful speeches.  Motivating speeches.  However.  It's a prequel to "Rogue One" and I didn't care for that film, so watching a series with the same tone is ... difficult.  It's not just dark, it's bleak.  It's sad.  And, much like the film it's based on, it's fatalistic.  There is death.  A lot of death.  It's dressed up in the "grand gesture" of sacrifice for the greater good but that doesn't change the fact that there is little joy here.  I guess the big question is, if it only took two hours to tell the end of Andor's story, why does it take some 12+ hours to provide the lead-up?  Because the producers are trying to fill in a million different shadings.  It's not enough to talk about Andor, they have to tell a broad tale, of politics, revolution and more.  Authoritarianism, a vicious military, the struggle of feminism even among the bad guys, the impact of old traditions, the lack of caring about the poor, the rise of an incompetent and mentally imbalanced young man, using prisoners for slave labor, unbridled ambition being rewarded, questionable moral decisions, you name it.  It's all crammed in there.  It's grand and epic.  And it works, a bit.  Taken in small doses, the acting, script and high production values make an impact.  I guess the question is, is it a tale we need to hear?  And that's the point.  The OG Star Wars was escapism.  Fantasy.  A boy comes of age and rescues a princess.  "Andor" is, like Trek, very contemporary.  In our modern age, where oppression and fascism is on the rise, we are urged by a lead character here to stop sleeping, to fight back.  Regardless of the cost.  Because freedom cannot be taken away.  It is, oddly, a propaganda piece.  I recognize all of it.  Whether viewers will respond will be a factor of how much they recognize the themes, I think.  It's complicated.  We'll see what season two brings.  I imagine it will have something to do with the world stage.  Our world.