Tony Gilroy: ‘Andor’ Has Same Aesthetic As Bourne Films
We’ve known for a while now that Andor will be a spy drama set in the Star Wars galaxy, but showrunner, writer and director Tony Gilroy has opened up about what the series has in common with past work of his, such as The Bourne Identity.
In an interview with Total Film, Gilroy talked about the process behind making The Bourne Identity and how that was similar to Andor.
I had been trying to get people to make an acoustic action movie, because action movies had gotten so bombastic in the ’80s, they were just enormous. So when Bourne came along, we went way down to nothing.
It was about making it real. Keeping someone you really understand and really care about in a place that you understand the geography of, with stakes, is much more involving than a guy on a train with 15 machine guns and a helicopter coming down. That aesthetic, that idea, does carry over to Andor because we are on the ground with these people, so that everything that we do has an intimacy and an acoustic nature to it within the grandeur of Star Wars.
That desire to strip things back for a more intimate and “acoustic” setting was evident in Rogue One, for which Gilroy helped work on the script. Clearly he means to carry that aesthetic over to Andor too, which makes sense given that Cassian is an important part of both stories. The series will balance the heavier tone and content of the story while hopefully making sure it has enough adventure and excitement to feel like a Star Wars story.
It’s an adventure story. It’s one man’s odyssey through the center [of the story] and then all these peripheral characters surrounding him and spinning around. I mean, god, it’s looking to be entertaining. It’s heavy material, heavy things are happening, but it’s an adventure story, too.
This wouldn’t be the first time we see a character take their first steps into a larger world, but it looks like that world will be a little bit darker this time around.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
