Rogue One, Andor, Activism, and the Honour of Being a Historic Footnote
The stories of those fighting for a future they may never see
This article contains spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the first season of Andor.
Cassian: “Do you think anybody’s listening?”
Jyn: “I do. Someone’s out there.”
It’s mid-afternoon on January 1, 2017. I’m hovering somewhere between 60/70% still pretty drunk from a new year’s eve party the night before, and while I’m enjoying the whisky-induced high, I’m also starting to worry about a potentially apocalyptic hangover that’s probably on its way.
A few days before, I’d agreed to watch the recently released Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in the cinema on New Year’s Day. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time, but now the thought of spending two hours in a darkened room with laser beams flashing in front of my bleary eyes and explosions blasting in surround sound while sobriety kicked in was, to put it mildly, not very appealing.
Though based in Vietnam, I was back in Singapore for the holidays and to spend time with my wife, Kirsten, who’d been waxing lyrical about Rogue One since seeing it a week or two before. I was curious as to why, seeing as she’s generally quite ambivalent about the famous samurai space wizards genre.
For the past seven years, Kirsten had been active in Singapore’s tiny anti-death penalty movement. In a country where those in charge consider the use of capital punishment to be sacrosanct and frown upon any outspoken political dissent, this essentially meant that she was often viewed as an enemy of the authoritarian government, perhaps even the state itself. Although Star Wars is usually considered a franchise that leans heavily into escapism, Kirsten said Rogue One resonated with her: “I really love it, this one really gets it”, she’d told me.
Since I already had a ticket, I skulked into the theatre and found my seat. There was no BLAAARRRRHHHH opening score, there was no opening crawl, it cut straight into the story, and (in part by tapping into the 10-year-old kid part of my brain) I was pretty much hooked from the get-go. By the third act, when a small group of rebels lead an assault on an Imperial military facility, I remember sitting there with my eyes wide open, thinking ‘Holy Christ, I don’t want this to end…’
But the real kicker of Rogue One comes once the epic space battles and pew-pew! ray gun fights are mostly over: after completing their mission to steal plans for the Death Star (a planet-destroying space station), the two main protagonists, fugitive-turned-rebel Jyn Erso and rebel intelligence officer Cassian Andor, broadcast the blueprints into the ether, not knowing if it will be picked up by the nearby rebel fleet. Meanwhile, the Death Star sends down a blast from above, triggering a nuclear-like explosion on the surface of the planet.
The pair of resistance fighters stumble away, injured and aware they’re about to be vaporised. They hug as the massive fireball gets closer, and the screen turns white. There’s no closure for these characters; no celebrations or happy endings. They die not knowing, but hoping, that there was someone out there receiving; that someone was listening.
The space opera’s 21st century evolution
Rogue One is a prequel to Star Wars: A New Hope — one of the most famous movies ever made — so you probably don’t need me to explain what happens next, but for the sake of clarity: the signal is picked up by a rebel ship, the Empire gives chase, the Death Star plans eventually reach the rebel base, and, as the evil space station approaches, the rebels launch a brave, last minute salvo; Luke Skywalker uses his nepo baby superpowers to destroy the planet killer just in the nick of time, the good guys rejoice, there’s a nice medal ceremony (even though Chewbacca totally gets snubbed) and we finish on a high note; good prevails, evil is defeated.
The 1977 film is a classic bit of storytelling with an unapologetically black & white narrative, albeit one that cleverly weaves in themes and concerns that were pertinent at the time (i.e. the overly mechanised imperialism was analogous to US military actions in Vietnam and Korea; the Death Star being reminiscent of the then looming threat of nuclear war). 30-something years after its release, and after Star Wars had deeply rooted itself within pop culture, director George Lucas’s intellectual property was purchased by Disney, which began to regularly churn out sequels, prequels and spin off films & TV shows, with very mixed results. While some rely heavily on nostalgia, others, like Rogue One, reimagine the Star Wars universe with a modern take, exploring themes like the ethics of a rebellion that’s far more grey and morally dubious than it might first appear.
A few years after Rogue One, Tony Gilroy, one of the film’s writers, created the spin-off series, Andor (a prequel to the prequel), which tells the story of the rebellion’s genesis through the eyes of the titular character, Cassian Andor (played by Diego Luna). The second and final season of Andor will premiere next week; the first season was met with critical acclaim and, alongside Rogue One, is generally considered one of the seminal works of Disney-era Star Wars.
A galaxy far, far away with themes that hit close to home
For me, both Andor and Rogue One are borderline masterpieces. They’re not just entertaining examples of excellent storytelling, but works that have managed to draw upon an established sci-fi fantasy franchise to showcase some of the brutal realities of living under tyranny.
Andor builds on the themes established in Rogue One, while exploring others: how cruel and uncertain existence can be under authoritarian rule, the overzealousness and stupidity of private security companies, how prison systems can be inescapable dens of slave labour, the devastation of colonialism on indigenous peoples, and so on.
Both the show and film also go to lengths to highlight how many of the rebels have faced dilemmas and sometimes compromise on their morals in order to fight a greater evil. One might feel pushed into making a terrible choice; others, faced with an overwhelming enemy, might go down a more militant or extreme path. When introduced in Rogue One, Cassian Andor chooses to kill an informant rather than risk his capture. Forest Whitaker’s character Saw Gerrera is portrayed as an increasingly unhinged leader of a splinter group of hyper-fanatical partisans who love themselves a bit of torture whenever the chance arises. In one scene from Andor, where Luthen Rael (one to the architects of the rebellion, played by Stellan Skarsgård) is asked what he’s sacrificed for this cause. His response has become one of the more iconic monologues in recent television history:
Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion: I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight — they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a saviour against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet.
What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!
Before I watched the series, I’d heard Andor had become a favourite among many people from Myanmar — those who’d fled the country after the military took power in the brutal 2021 coup, and those who either returned or stayed to fight the military junta. I can see why.
While the notions of rebellion and fighting for a better tomorrow easily ring true, the last four years have also seen the country beset by a brutal and devastating civil war, where people have been forced to make tough choices or to navigate almost impossible situations. Young people, who’d never thought of going to war, have taken up arms to join the People’s Defence Force or ethnic armed groups; others have had to leave their families behind and flee the country to avoid military conscription. How many difficult, even out-of-character, decisions might have had to be made along the way? Much as we love the simplicity of an ‘honourable good guys versus despicable bad guys’ story, reality doesn’t let us off so easily.
Sci-fi fantasy, meet Hannah Arendt
The rebels’ fight against authoritarianism is juxtaposed with the inner workings of the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB), the Empire’s main security and intelligence agency, and how its operatives justify their actions in the name of maintaining order. Contrast Luthen Rael’s monologue with a speech from a senior ISB officer when discussing the organisation's role:
Security is an illusion. You want security? Call the Navy. Launch a regiment of troopers. We are healthcare providers. We treat sickness. We identify symptoms. We locate germs whether they arise from within or have come from the outside. The longer we wait to identify a disorder, the harder it is to treat the disease.
If you’ve ever lived under an authoritarian system, these words hit hard.
The Empire in the film and TV series aren’t depicted as snarling evil despots, broadcasting to all that they’re very clearly the baddies. Instead, we’re presented with a cumbersome, bureaucratic branch of government, where decisions on curtailing civil liberties and clamping down on civilian populaces are made in bland, brightly-lit boardrooms. Gone are the Sith Lords with fiery eyes signifying the corruption of their souls; here the real monsters are glorified office drones with inflated egos, who are working just as hard to try and one-up each other as they are trying to root out rebel cells.
For a story that takes place in a galaxy far, far away, this is all a very ‘human’ sort of evil.
The ‘othering’ of potential troublemakers and the things ISB agents are willing to do are on display in frighteningly real terms in the series, particularly those featuring Denise Gough’s character, Dedra Meero. In one scene in her office, she kindly tells her overworked assistant that she’ll handle his extra workload so he can take the rest of the day off; a few episodes later she’s interrogating a suspect with supposed ties to Andor, using a torture method designed to essentially break the person mentally. Seemingly normal people capable of care and empathy can easily switch to committing unimaginable acts of harm if it means getting the results they want. Oppression can often come with a polite face.
The details and extent of violence might differ, but this fictional world feels familiar to people like Kirsten because it's what she's witnessed in real life. This respectable, officious mode of working has parallels with Singapore, where state prosecutors show up in neatly pressed shirts and jackets to argue tooth and nail for someone to be sent to the gallows, or softly spoken police officers open investigations into activists over nonviolent, non-disruptive acts of dissent. Are these people good lawyers or officers? Did they apply for their jobs with the desire to do good? When they clock off work, are they kind spouses and parents? Are they people one might have a good conversation with over a drink, talking about sports or trivial, everyday annoyances?
Chances are probably, yes.
Fighting for a better tomorrow
Storytelling along the lines of ‘good vs. evil — good wins, huzzah!’ can seem a bit cut and dry for the modern age. We now have more readily available access to knowledge of atrocities taking place around the globe than ever before; global news coverage provides us with a seemingly non-stop cycle of horror, despair and devastation.
In the past week, the news has brought us stories of US president Donald Trump having a right old laugh with his Salvadoran counterpart about detaining innocent people in hellish conditions, Russian ballistic missiles killing almost 40 people in Ukraine, and Israel continuing its persecution of Palestinians. These are as shocking as they are predictable; the Trump administration has matched its cruelty with incompetence on-and-off since 2017, the Russian military has killed thousands civilians in Ukraine for over three years, Israel has committed to turning Gaza into a wasteland for most of living memory, and on and on the cycle of shit goes.
It’s overwhelming.
What difference can we make?
Is there any point in trying to bring about change?
Do you think anybody’s listening?
I remember coming out of the cinema, and (while still buzzing from the space battle adrenaline high) also getting it: This is a story about the people who might not be remembered as heroes, but without whom the ultimate victory would not have been possible. Some people might end up as mere footnotes — the ones who gave all they could but who never got to enjoy the fruits of their desperate labour. But because they kept fighting, even if the odds seemed insurmountable at the time, they paved the way for change to happen.
This is what Kirsten meant when she said that Rogue One “gets it”. The film — with its characters trying to make the best choices available in complicated situations, struggling against an opponent many times more powerful, with no clear end or certainty of victory in sight — reflected back to her some of the reasons why she kept going.
Maybe success seems like a long shot right now, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t worth fighting for. Everything done today lays the foundation that makes change more possible tomorrow.