The brand new trailer for James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ looks super, man

Welcome to the Friday edition of Popculturology.

I know that Disney re-released Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith in theaters earlier this month, but today is the actual twentieth anniversary of what was then the final Star Wars movie premiering at Cannes. Wild, huh? Twenty years?

Who would have imagined back in 2005 that two decades later we’d be talking about the finale of a show that was the prequel to a prequel about stealing the plans to the Death Star?

“I plan to tell them I was kidnapped”

Almost a decade after Rogue One hit theaters and roughly six years after a prequel series was announced by Lucasfilm, Andor came to an end this week.

Going into the final three-episode stretch, I texted my brothers: “It says a lot about Andor that I’ve been wondering how it’ll end when we know how it ends.” We knew that Cassian Andor was destined to leave Yavin, find Jyn Ero, steal the Death Star plans and die on Scarif. That was an immovable moment in Star Wars canon.

But there we still had a bit of journey left to arrive at that point.

Tony Gilroy and the Andor crew packed a ton into these final three episodes. We saw the beginning and the end of Luthen Rael’s story. We saw Kleya find a glimmer of peace. We saw a fledgling rebellion begin to rise up against the Empire, to steal the tiniest of victories. We saw an inevitable collision course of fate. We saw hope.

• “I think we used up all the perfect”: I would’ve been OK had Andor not explained Luthen Rael’s past. Not everything needs a backstory. But “Make It Stop” did a beautiful job of showing us how Luthen and Kleya found each other and grew into the backbone of the rebellion.
• A secret revealed: Despite Andor leading to Rogue One — you know, the movie about stealing the plans for the Death Star — I guess I didn’t expect the show to add a layer that tied Luthen into that revelation? It makes total sense, though, and is the payoff to Luthen’s sacrifice.
• “If you’re not a rebel spy, you missed your calling”: One, it’s a great twist that Dedra’s desire to rise above her station is what resulted in the first crack in the Empire’s shell of secrecy surrounding the Death Star. (If she hadn’t held on to those errant messages, Jung would’ve never been able to alert Luthen, setting everything in motion, right?) And two, wow, was this a terrifying version of Ben Mendelsohn’s Krennic. I guess he’s a lot tougher when he’s not up against Tarkin and Vader.
• “I was in a parade there once. Two hundred KX units. The Emperor was there.” I forgot just how funny Alan Tudyk is as K-2SO and how much Star Wars has missed this character.
• “May the Force be with you, captain”: Here’s to Benjamin Bratt for picking up the legacy of Bail Organa after Jimmy Smits wasn’t able to appear in Andor. It turns out Star Wars fans understand how acting works and don’t need a deepfake version of Mark Hamill to play Luke Skywalker until the universe collapses in on itself.
• Hope for the future: After last week’s episodes, I asked, “Do we think [Bix] learned what Cassian sacrificed?” That question hits so much harder after Andor’s final scene.

• 📖 Andor Finale: Creator Tony Gilroy Breaks Down the Star Wars Spy Saga’s Gut-Wrenching Ending (Anthony Breznican, Vanity Fair): “I mean, hope, right? For all the harshness of the show, and all the rugged ride that so many people have to make along the way, it would be a crime against storytelling and a crime against what I actually believe if I didn’t put some hope at the end of it.”
• 📖 The Most Extraordinary Episode of Andor’s Final Season Doesn’t Even Show the Title Character (Sam Adams, Slate): “It turns out that Kleya, like Luthen, has been in costume all along, and beneath her cultured exterior lies the heart of a badass. She makes her way through the hospital, felling Imperial guards as she goes, thinking so far ahead of what should be the Empire’s top agents that they later assume that the operation must have been carried out by at least three people.”
• 📖 Andor star Diego Luna, showrunner Tony Gilroy on that final devastating twist (Herb Scribner, The Washington Post): “‘Now we know what that sacrifice means,’ Luna told The Post of Cassian’s sacrifice. ‘We have images as the audience of what he’s talking about, what he’s leaving behind, what life he had there waiting for him if his decision was different or the moment was different.’”
• 📖 To Hell with Lightsabers — Star Wars Doesn’t Need Them (Mike Ryan, IndieWire): “It’s an entire series about slowly losing your rights as a citizen, not about supernatural beings with lightsabers. There are a plenty of interesting things about Tony Gilroy’s Andor. One of the most interesting? There’s not one single lightsaber in the show’s entire two-season run.”

Book nook

Here’s what I’ve been reading this week …

• UFO The Side Story of the U.S. Government’s Search for Alien Life Here — and Out There (Garrett M. Graff)
• Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang)

NEWS, NOTES & TRAILERS

🍿 “You have a dog?”

What was the last superhero movie with as much at stake as there is for Warner Bros. with Superman? Probably The Avengers, right? If it hadn’t worked, the MCU would’ve fallen apart in its infancy. The first Iron Man movie was a financial risk for Marvel, but it didn’t carry the burden of launching a cinematic universe.

James Gunn’s Superman carries that burden.

In addition to being the major launching point for the new DCU and DC Studios, Superman also needs to get Superman himself right. After the original Christopher Reeve movies, the character has been a tricky one for Warner Bros.

Superman Returns did a lot of things right (Brandon Routh deserved better) but it was still beholden to the Reeve movies in addition to having to now exist in a world where Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey have not aged well. Man of Steel could have been the foundation for something great, but Zack Snyder threw away Henry Cavill’s shot at a future with the character thanks to his dark misunderstanding of the character.

But based on the new trailer for Superman that we got on Wednesday, I think Gunn might have figured it out.