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Speaker 1: this podcast contains spoiler for and or including episodes ten
Speaker 1: and eleven. Hello, My name is Jason Concepcion, and welcome
Speaker 1: to X ray Vision, the Cricket Podcast, where we dive
Speaker 1: deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture.
Speaker 1: In this episode, in the previously on, we'll be commemorating
Speaker 1: the life and work of Kevin Conroy, the iconic voice
Speaker 1: of Batman and Bruce Wayne for millions of fans around
Speaker 1: the globe. We will be revisiting Black Panther Waconda Forever
Speaker 1: after its opening week, talking about the reaction to the
Speaker 1: film now a week out, and just the general topic
Speaker 1: of Marvel fatigue. Is it happening? What is it? What's
Speaker 1: going on? Care In the airlock, we're back in space
Speaker 1: for and Or episodes ten and eleven and in a
Speaker 1: hive mind. We are absolutely delighted to welcome and Or creator, screenwriter, director,
Speaker 1: showrunner extraordinary Tony Gilroyd to the program. Of course, if
Speaker 1: you want to jump around, check the show notes for
Speaker 1: the time stamps. In joining me today, you know it
Speaker 1: is the number one Godzilla writer working in ink and
Speaker 1: pages today in the digital and paper medium, the number
Speaker 1: one comics historian, the number one knower of things that
Speaker 1: are related to horror movies, it's Rosie night Hella.
Speaker 2: It's me.
Speaker 1: Rosie. How are you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3: I'm sad about you know, Kevin, but I'm happy with you.
Speaker 2: We have to pay homage.
Speaker 3: There is amazing impact, and I mean, I'm happy to
Speaker 3: be someone my ander again because this is as everybody knows.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is some of the best Star Wars.
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
Speaker 3: I ever put to TV, screen book, comic book like
Speaker 3: this stuff is.
Speaker 2: It's up there.
Speaker 3: So I'm really excited and I'll chat with Tony is
Speaker 3: good stuff.
Speaker 1: What a guy. Okay, let's let's get into it.
Speaker 4: First.
Speaker 1: Up on the previously on the discussion of the impact
Speaker 1: of Kevin Conray. So, Kevin Conroy passed away on November
Speaker 1: tenth due to an ongoing illness intestinal cancer. Reportedly and
Speaker 1: quite simply, he is Batman for millions of people, for
Speaker 1: four hundred plus episodes of television, including his you know,
Speaker 1: legendary run on Batman, the animated series. It's hard to
Speaker 1: really overstate the impact he had. Yeah, because you're talking
Speaker 1: about a time when so the Batman movies were coming
Speaker 1: out obviously still at this time.
Speaker 3: But.
Speaker 1: They had these the animated series felt connect to the
Speaker 1: quote unquote spirit of Batman. Yeah, the character in a
Speaker 1: way that was unique. And it's just impossible to even
Speaker 1: see a still from Batman the Animated series and not
Speaker 1: hear that deep like baritone voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean so often over the years, especially you know,
Speaker 3: many years ago, pre MCU and Superior movies were like
Speaker 3: back at the top of the game. Again, like most
Speaker 3: people of a certain age, if you ask them who
Speaker 3: the best Batman was, or who their Batman was, they
Speaker 3: would say Kevin Conroy.
Speaker 2: The animated series was.
Speaker 3: This all encompassing iconic thing that so many of us experienced,
Speaker 3: and that for many of us was the most regular
Speaker 3: Batman that we got. It was on TV, it was
Speaker 3: easy to follow, you could watch it. Also, it was
Speaker 3: you know, came out around the time of Batman Returns.
Speaker 3: It had a Danny Elfman score. It felt like it
Speaker 3: was connected to the movies, but it also felt like
Speaker 3: it was a part to the comics. It adapted everything
Speaker 3: from you know, the Dark Knight Returns to like the
Speaker 3: most silly, kind of playful elements of Batman. It also
Speaker 3: introduced Harlequin obviously and huge. Yeah, and at the heart
Speaker 3: of it is is Kevin Conroy and that performance, and
Speaker 3: for so long, Batman, the animated series kept Batman alive
Speaker 3: in the hearts of DC fans and people who love
Speaker 3: superhero movies and people who don't, people who just like
Speaker 3: that show and love Kevin. And it's kind of like
Speaker 3: I would say, he's comparable to you know, Mark Hamill
Speaker 3: and carry They really they kept Star Wars alive for
Speaker 3: a long time when the movies weren't coming out by
Speaker 3: doing cons and being present and having cameos and connecting
Speaker 3: with fans and keeping that conversation going and that love going.
Speaker 2: And Kevin was like that.
Speaker 3: And recently he'd actually written a comic in the DC
Speaker 3: Pride anthology that we talked about with Danny Fernandez called
Speaker 3: Finding Batman, which is about how growing up as a
Speaker 3: gay teenager was incredibly hard and how his journey to
Speaker 3: Batman and becoming Batman reflects that part of his life.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3: DC actually put it up for free for people to read,
Speaker 3: so you can read it right now, and it's just, yeah,
Speaker 3: what an unbelievable loss. And I'm just really one of
Speaker 3: the things I think is really special is Kevin actually
Speaker 3: got to play a future version of Batman in the
Speaker 3: live action c dow stuff recently. So I love that
Speaker 3: we got to see that Batman become you know, that
Speaker 3: the Kevin's face Batman rather than.
Speaker 2: Just his his incredible voice.
Speaker 3: But yeah, never been a better time to go back
Speaker 3: and watch Batman made series, which is such a joy
Speaker 3: and still just one of the best TV shows ever made.
Speaker 1: Connor Goldsmith, who hosts the Unbelievable cerebro Cast, one of
Speaker 1: the one of the most indelible, unique and fun podcasts
Speaker 1: about comics, specifically the X Men that is out there.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely vibrant with a really fun community, tweeted the
Speaker 1: other day, It's been lovely to see the whole comics
Speaker 1: internet coming together to celebrate Kevin Conroy. Apart from his
Speaker 1: unrivaled work as a voice actor, which will be immortal,
Speaker 1: I'm so sad that in such an important gale there
Speaker 1: is gone. He lived through so much and achieved so much.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful it was such an important part of his story.
Speaker 1: On Kevin Conray, you will be missed, all right. We're
Speaker 1: a week plus away from Black Panther Wakanda Forever and
Speaker 1: I've been interested to see the just to take in
Speaker 1: the reaction and specifically the reaction. You know, I did this.
Speaker 1: I did a guest spot on on the Recode podcast
Speaker 1: with Peter Kofka for Vox, and he was asking me
Speaker 1: about Marvel fatigue, and I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 1: about it, Rosie, because he was like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you think about Marvel fatigue? Some people are
Speaker 1: tired of it or they're waiting for people to be
Speaker 1: tired of it. What do you think is going on?
Speaker 1: And it's been interesting that it's you know, as phase
Speaker 1: four is kicked off, it has been really it's been
Speaker 1: a huge topic and I think there's various reasons for that.
Speaker 1: And first of all, with regards to Marvel fatigue, it
Speaker 1: will happen. If it's not happening now, people will get
Speaker 1: people like, you know, everything that is popular will at
Speaker 1: some point become less popular and stop happening. There's no
Speaker 1: there's no reason to imagine that the Marvel movies will
Speaker 1: remain the top box office breaking movies in the world
Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives. Like they will fall
Speaker 1: off at some point. But I think what's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is, you know, having come from a writing background,
Speaker 1: is somewhat of a criticism background is I think a
Speaker 1: lot of what's happening is as Marvel was going on
Speaker 1: its run all the way up through Endgame. I think
Speaker 1: that there were a lot of critics and people who
Speaker 1: like movies generally, just fan of movies generally, who thought,
Speaker 1: oh shit, is this what movies are going to be now?
Speaker 1: And and we're not particularly maybe they like two or
Speaker 1: three of the MCU movies, but we're not particularly fans
Speaker 1: of the movies, which is absolutely fine. Like what you
Speaker 1: like and like what you don't like. But I but
Speaker 1: if I can, I can also understand if I was
Speaker 1: a critic who didn't like Marvel movies, I would be like, shit,
Speaker 1: am I out of a job? If I tell? And
Speaker 1: I think now that Phase four has come out and it,
Speaker 1: you know, didn't have the kind of drive, narrative drive.
Speaker 1: I think that the Marvel the somewhat disparate you know,
Speaker 1: we're telling different stories about hidden societies, and there's no
Speaker 1: there has been no central big bed to kind of
Speaker 1: shoot for over the course of the face. I think
Speaker 1: that I think that a lot of this is people
Speaker 1: just feeling more comfortable now to say, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't like Marvel movies. We're in the past. It
Speaker 1: would have been like you'd get you'd potentially get an
Speaker 1: email from your editor like too bad.
Speaker 2: Sorry. No, I'm just.
Speaker 3: Saying I'm not confirming or denying if that's the case,
Speaker 3: but I will say it sounds familiar.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that I think that is realistic. And I
Speaker 2: think there's two big things here right.
Speaker 3: One is that as comic book fans, as people who
Speaker 3: lived through the nineties boom when comic books were everywhere,
Speaker 3: we've actually seen this before, the idea of fatigue on
Speaker 3: comics or comics being the biggest thing in the world
Speaker 3: and they're everywhere, and they're talking about death of Superman
Speaker 3: on the news, and there's five hundred.
Speaker 2: People queuing up outside a shop to meet Rob Leifeld.
Speaker 2: You know, we've lived through that. We've already lived through.
Speaker 3: Oh, this thing we love is now the most important
Speaker 3: thing in the world in the early two thousands to
Speaker 3: a certain extent, Spider Man, X men.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we know that.
Speaker 2: These things are cyclical.
Speaker 3: If people are tired of Marvel, that's, like you said,
Speaker 3: it's to be expected. And I think the other thing
Speaker 3: that you can't kind of count out about the way
Speaker 3: that the conversation is going, especially on a critical lens,
Speaker 3: because you know, people have to watch all these things
Speaker 3: multiple movies in a year.
Speaker 1: I think that's a big part of Disney critical texture.
Speaker 3: I think that Disney Plus has been so influential for
Speaker 3: both better and worse.
Speaker 2: We love it.
Speaker 3: I mean, one division to me unbelievable, Like Jonathan Major's King,
Speaker 3: these are things, These are stories I never thought I
Speaker 3: would get to see. And if we weren't living in
Speaker 3: an age where you know, I'll put it in brackets
Speaker 3: content because I don't really like calling this stuff that,
Speaker 3: but like content is king, you know, we probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: be getting a story based on a weird Scarlet Witch
Speaker 3: and Vision mini series, or we wouldn't be venturing into
Speaker 3: the world of Kang if we hadn't already spent ten
Speaker 3: years digging into some of the weirder parts of Marvel.
Speaker 3: But it, to me is very understandable that certain people might.
Speaker 2: Be overwhelmed or tiring and even.
Speaker 3: Quicker because of the fact that there are so many
Speaker 3: of these things to take note of. There are multiple
Speaker 3: weekly shows, and if you add Star Wars into it,
Speaker 3: then you're getting and then you add all the other
Speaker 3: things Disney and Pixar, you know, there's multiple different versions.
Speaker 3: I will personally say the thing I think that is
Speaker 3: positive about this for people who don't like it or
Speaker 3: who do like it, Phase four, to me, is about
Speaker 3: a certain level of choice.
Speaker 1: There's absolutely agree with you for all different.
Speaker 2: Kinds of people.
Speaker 3: Now, look we I always I love indie movies, I
Speaker 3: love World Cinema, I love horror, I love b movies,
Speaker 3: I love Fantasia Fest.
Speaker 2: I always want to see more kinds of movies.
Speaker 3: So I understand that celebrating Disney for a certain amount
Speaker 3: of variety is like cheering on a monopoly. But I
Speaker 3: will say I think Phase four is actually positive, that
Speaker 3: it's not this huge cultural beer moth that is everyone
Speaker 3: has to like every movie. I actually think it's great
Speaker 3: that you can like Love Eternals and not like Doctor Strange.
Speaker 3: I like both of them just for flabibitation. I really
Speaker 3: like Doctor Strange. But I think the fact that there's
Speaker 3: more of this stuff and people can have varying degrees
Speaker 3: of conversation. Also, I am very much a person who says,
Speaker 3: if you don't like it, just that's fine, Like you
Speaker 3: can actually just not like it, and there's been a
Speaker 3: lot of voices who, like you said, are feeling more comfortable.
Speaker 3: Does that relate to how people actually feel about Marvel movies.
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily think so. I mean, just to compare
Speaker 3: numbers in the opening weekend of Black Panther were kind
Speaker 3: of forever arguably probably the most anticipated movie of the
Speaker 3: year on a pop culture level.
Speaker 1: Sure agreed, that made one.
Speaker 3: Hundred and eighty million domestic three hundred and thirty million
Speaker 3: worldwide in about three.
Speaker 2: Or four days.
Speaker 3: That is almost dollar for a dollar, the same amount
Speaker 3: that Black Adam made in like almost a month.
Speaker 2: So it's there's a there might be a critical fatigue.
Speaker 3: I know that there's definitely general TV watchers who aren't
Speaker 3: keeping up with every Marvel show, But I don't necessarily
Speaker 3: know that Marvel fatigue means anything kind of dire for
Speaker 3: the future of the ties.
Speaker 1: I mean, which is interesting, which is why I want
Speaker 1: to raise it, because whenever the question is asked, or
Speaker 1: whenever I'm asked that, or whenever I hear that conversation,
Speaker 1: it's always framed as it's you know, almost like when
Speaker 1: is this is this over?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Is this whole thing over? And I and I think
Speaker 1: that we've gotten to a point where to pick up
Speaker 1: on something you're talking about, whether Disney intended this or not.
Speaker 1: We've hit a point now with the movies, with the
Speaker 1: Disney plus offerings where it's kind of like, Okay, what
Speaker 1: kind of marvel do you like? Do you like spy ship?
Speaker 1: Do you like shit?
Speaker 2: Do you like do you like shit?
Speaker 1: You like shit?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Do you want funny stuff? Do you want?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it's so listen, I'm sure that Disney wants you
Speaker 1: to watch every single It's like looking movie we are watching.
Speaker 1: We we are those people like we are you know,
Speaker 1: we're in the tank for it, you know, because this
Speaker 1: is what we have loved. But I think we've also
Speaker 1: reached a point where this popularity may wax and wane.
Speaker 1: But as a as a proposition, these movies and shows
Speaker 1: aren't really gonna go anywhere. Like the budgets may go
Speaker 1: up and budgets may go up and down. They may
Speaker 1: release less movies per year, they may release less shows
Speaker 1: per year, which I think and more and more yeah,
Speaker 1: or they make more animated whatever it is. But this
Speaker 1: stuff is here, like all this this genre is here now,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, not going anywhere for the foreseeable future,
Speaker 1: although you know, the density and the cadence of them
Speaker 1: may change.
Speaker 3: And also like this is something that I've talked about
Speaker 3: with you guys, But like these patterns have been seen before, right,
Speaker 3: Like the X Men movies X one x two. People
Speaker 3: love those, Sam raym Spider Man one and two, they
Speaker 3: loved them. Then you had like Tim Stories Fantastic Four,
Speaker 3: which I think are very fun, even though they disrespected Galactus.
Speaker 3: So I've never forgiven that in the second one. But
Speaker 3: like I feel like movies like Morbius, like there's always
Speaker 3: gonna be a dilution of quality when something becomes so saturated.
Speaker 3: So that's gonna happen. And the real truth is that
Speaker 3: until a new movie comes out that has almost one
Speaker 3: hundred years of source material for people to be like,
Speaker 3: oh I can make one of those two, these movies
Speaker 3: are going to keep being here.
Speaker 2: It's like, whenever I try and think about it, like
Speaker 2: you know, action.
Speaker 3: Movies, the trends, the blockbusters, the things that have happened before,
Speaker 3: it's hard to predict what that kind of zeitgeist shifting.
Speaker 1: It's unpredictable. It's it's this is when I was working
Speaker 1: at the Ringer Reader in binge mode, and Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones was coming to an end, Like a major part
Speaker 1: of the conversation was monoculture and is this the end
Speaker 1: of monoculture with the end of Game of Thrones? Will
Speaker 1: there ever be anything that captures the imagination like this?
Speaker 1: And similar to end, you know, endgame was coming on
Speaker 1: the heels of the end of Game of Thrones, So
Speaker 1: it was like this feeling of oh have we have
Speaker 1: we exited the era of this huge, you know, piece
Speaker 1: of cultural content that everybody takes part in, and no
Speaker 1: one again, as you said, no one can predict what
Speaker 1: that thing is going to be. But if there's one
Speaker 1: thing I'm sure of is that there will be another
Speaker 1: thing like that again and again and again. Because we
Speaker 1: create people, human beings crave it. We crave this massive
Speaker 1: story that we can all talk about with our friends
Speaker 1: or argue about and say, did you notice this? I
Speaker 1: noticed this. The whole world is based on stories.
Speaker 2: Culture.
Speaker 3: Human culture has been based on stories, from the traditions
Speaker 3: of oral storytelling to religious texts to you know, comic
Speaker 3: books like I always remember I went to this unbelievable
Speaker 3: is one of the best days of my life. Still
Speaker 3: it was like a Mike carry how to make comics
Speaker 3: like Little Class and it was so cool and I
Speaker 3: love the stuff.
Speaker 2: I yet with Apocalypse, so I'm super into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he said, you know, if somebody just found
Speaker 3: like an entire run of the X Men comics in
Speaker 3: five hundred years, they would probably think that was like
Speaker 3: our Odyssey or some kind of real folk law that's shaped.
Speaker 3: That is fifty thousand plus issues. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: decades of human storytelling. It's analogous, it's not real, but
Speaker 3: stories really matter. And whether it's comic book stories, whether
Speaker 3: it's adaptations of Michael Crichton books like Jurassic Park, whether
Speaker 3: it's biographical films, whatever, that next thing is going to
Speaker 3: be that kind of blows up the world.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be about stories.
Speaker 3: And like you said, we're always going to find something else,
Speaker 3: especially with the Internet, because that allows us to connect
Speaker 3: over these things in a way that was never possible
Speaker 3: for and that's part of why we want the commune
Speaker 3: or storytelling, the water cooler moments of Game of Fans.
Speaker 1: Okay, up next, we return to a galaxy far far
Speaker 1: away to discuss and or episodes ten and eleven X
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Speaker 1: you swim? Can you swim?
Speaker 3: Rosie? I can swim, but I am very scared of
Speaker 3: large swaths of water, So I was really having a
Speaker 3: lot of empathy, uh for.
Speaker 1: Our good friend Keino Lloyd. Well, we are stepping off
Speaker 1: of the balcony in the prison, the industrial prison of
Speaker 1: Nartina five, into the water, and we're swimming away to
Speaker 1: talk about and Or episodes ten and eleven.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Episode ten titled One Way Out written by bo Willhelmon
Speaker 1: and directed by Toby Haynes, and episode eleven Daughter of
Speaker 1: Ferris written by Tony Gilroy and directed by Benjamin Karen.
Speaker 1: We start with and Or ten. Wow Wulf's body is
Speaker 1: wheeled out of the facility after he has been euthanized
Speaker 1: by the medical tech there. Cassian tells, you know that, listen,
Speaker 1: we got to make our move now. They can't wait.
Speaker 1: They you know, they there, We're not leaving here. You
Speaker 1: can see that now, can't you. And Cassian tells them
Speaker 1: like they don't have enough guards to watch us. They
Speaker 1: know it. They're scared of us. We need to act.
Speaker 1: When they bring a new person down to replace Ulaf,
Speaker 1: that's when we have to move. Cassian and Keina returned
Speaker 1: to the barracks. They tell the men that they what
Speaker 1: they know. There's been a massacre on two. Then Ulaf
Speaker 1: was euthanized, and the bottom line is, we're not leaving
Speaker 1: this place. It doesn't matter what your sentence says, doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how many shifts you have left. You're gonna die here, yeah,
Speaker 1: or some other place that's exactly like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And there's a there's a great moment where Cassian
Speaker 3: says it and they kind of they go oh, and
Speaker 3: they try and explain it away. But then Keino realizes
Speaker 3: in that moment that he has to be the one
Speaker 3: to tell them, and he's.
Speaker 1: Like, it's true, Like nobody's getting out.
Speaker 2: And that's their boss, that's the man who's steered them
Speaker 2: through and so.
Speaker 1: They know in that moment, what a fucking great Andy
Speaker 1: serkis you just did?
Speaker 2: And I love and I wish I hope that this.
Speaker 2: I hope this will get him.
Speaker 3: I hope that this will get him more non CG roles,
Speaker 3: because I feel like he's he's selling it in this.
Speaker 2: He's just like absolutely delivering at every level. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think he's my secret talent.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 1: He's a legitimately mesmerizing actor on screen. You know obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, connected to his CG work, his
Speaker 1: MO cap work, but like a great actor, and he's
Speaker 1: he's mesmerizing in this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: At back at ib Boo, Deirdre has been tracking Anton Kreeger,
Speaker 1: this rebel leader, uh and he's they're waiting for him
Speaker 1: to take this bait that they've laid out there, and
Speaker 1: he's taken the bait. So the ISB is on the
Speaker 1: on the track right of the Anton Kreeker they're watching him.
Speaker 1: Next morning, Keino Loy gets the men ready for what
Speaker 1: they're going to have to face that day. They go
Speaker 1: through the motions as if it's a normal shift and
Speaker 1: they're just waiting for the moment that the guards bringing
Speaker 1: the lift's replacement. Down on Corssant, Mathma and Tay meet
Speaker 1: the gangster Davos. He he's there to hear what it
Speaker 1: is that mathmaonte need. Basically, they need money. Wondering, Davos
Speaker 1: sees through this kind of like cover story that they're
Speaker 1: spinning about a charitable organization that just needs, you know, liquidity.
Speaker 1: They need an injection of cash to carry on with
Speaker 1: their charitable works. He sees through this. He says, listen,
Speaker 1: I'll do I'll loan you some four hundred thousand credits,
Speaker 1: but I don't want anything in return. You just owe me.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it, like you know some kind of
Speaker 1: schedule to pay back. You just will owe me a favor.
Speaker 1: And was like, no, no, no, no, no no no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to owe a gangster a favor. No,
Speaker 1: Like we'll just work something out like monetarily. And Dallas
Speaker 1: is like, no, well, instead of that, what about this
Speaker 1: introduce my son to your daughter? He wants to. He
Speaker 1: wants to set up a love match. He says, two
Speaker 1: young people, attractive and privileged Chandrilline citizens. Mathma is aghast,
Speaker 1: but Davas is like, take it or leave it. Mathma
Speaker 1: declines Claya, Luthan's assistant at the shop on Coussant, brings
Speaker 1: news that there are marks on a fountain out in
Speaker 1: the town, which is like a sign that there's a
Speaker 1: meaning to be set up, but she doesn't like the
Speaker 1: timing of this could be a trap. Back on Narcina five,
Speaker 1: the guards bring the new man down, Cassian and the
Speaker 1: rest of the prisoners spring into action, and long story short,
Speaker 1: everybody fucking gets out. It is false pounding, you know.
Speaker 1: Keno gives this incredible speech. He gets the men all
Speaker 1: chanting one way out.
Speaker 3: He has this moment again, it's this thing of they
Speaker 3: get to the control room, he takes over the speaker
Speaker 3: and Cassian's like, it has to be you and just
Speaker 3: coach him.
Speaker 2: He's like, you've been doing this, You've been for five
Speaker 2: hundred shifts, two thousand shifts.
Speaker 3: You've been the one whose voice has sparked them into action,
Speaker 3: and you have to do it now. And they turn
Speaker 3: off all the power and it is just it's a
Speaker 3: prison breakout. They get blasters, they are taken down and
Speaker 3: guess what, Cassian was right. They did not have enough guards.
Speaker 3: This is running on a very i'll say tight ship
Speaker 3: but cheap. The empire is cheap, and they've been using
Speaker 3: the flaws and the electrocution to not have to put
Speaker 3: money into actually starffing this prison.
Speaker 1: When Cassian is laying that all out to Keino, he
Speaker 1: he says, and I think it's a fascinating thing to
Speaker 1: think about, how how brutality is actually an indicator of
Speaker 1: fear and weakness. He says. Listen, if they had enough,
Speaker 1: if they weren't scared of us, why why wouldn't they
Speaker 1: just you know, keep everybody alive there. They are terrified.
Speaker 1: That's why they wiped out the entire floor of two
Speaker 1: because they're scared and they know that they can't handle
Speaker 1: us if we all rise up. And then there's this
Speaker 1: It's a small moment, but it was so powerful when
Speaker 1: you're seeing these prisoners, you know, fighting their way to
Speaker 1: the top of the facility, rampaging through it and killing
Speaker 1: guards and you know, moving to the top taking their revenge.
Speaker 1: There is a small scene of these guards like cowering
Speaker 1: in like a closet somewhere, just terrified, and it was
Speaker 1: it really kind of closed the loop on that thing
Speaker 1: that Cassian was saying up front, which was they're scared
Speaker 1: of us. Yes they're brutal, but it's their brutal methods
Speaker 1: that let you know that they're scared.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I want to say as well, this is
Speaker 3: like another We talked about this a lot when we
Speaker 3: were talking about this arc on Naquina five, but like,
Speaker 3: this is a show where Tony Gilroy has put you
Speaker 3: in the position of empathizing with prisoners, prisoners who were
Speaker 3: doing labor like prisoners do every day in this country,
Speaker 3: and he is then getting you to support them when
Speaker 3: they riot against their conditions and against the fact in
Speaker 3: an unjust system. He is saying, you agree with this,
Speaker 3: You there is no question that what you are watching
Speaker 3: is right. And I just think that's so powerful in
Speaker 3: the context the conversations that we have about the prison
Speaker 3: industrial complex, and it was this is a very special
Speaker 3: episode out of all of the and not in like.
Speaker 2: That Don't do Drugs kind of espials.
Speaker 1: I love those two, but like, I mean, it's it
Speaker 1: is after all the build up of this, in particular
Speaker 1: the last two the previous two episodes, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: post al Donnie Cassian's arrest on the vacation World of
Speaker 1: Namos and kind of like you know, the the trumped
Speaker 1: up charges by which he is arrested. This is such
Speaker 1: a cathartic episode because you're absolutely right. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: put you in their shoes to such a degree that
Speaker 1: you understand that this is right, and we.
Speaker 2: Know that right right, there's no question this is what
Speaker 2: they need to do.
Speaker 3: This is an unjust system that has imprisoned them so
Speaker 3: their bodies can be exploited for labor, and they're never
Speaker 3: gonna leave if they don't do this. It's it's heartbreaking
Speaker 3: and amazing. And Andy Serkis gives this unbelievable performance as
Speaker 3: this kind of reluctant leader turned man who knows that
Speaker 3: this is like the one good thing. He has been
Speaker 3: complicit in this system for so long, absolutely and he
Speaker 3: knows this is one thing he can do. It's it's
Speaker 3: not a true complicity because he didn't have a choice,
Speaker 3: but in his role as being the floor manager, every
Speaker 3: day one of his crews was getting electrocuted.
Speaker 2: You know, he played the game in line exactly.
Speaker 1: People will play the game for a long time until
Speaker 1: it's revealed that actually there's no and to the game.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, that even the rules that are laid
Speaker 1: out for you or fake. The men fight their way
Speaker 1: to the top and they find themselves, you know, high
Speaker 1: above a body of water, and men are hurling themselves
Speaker 1: off into the water. They're swimming away, the screaming one
Speaker 1: way out, yeah, one way out, and Cassie in terms
Speaker 1: of Keno, let's go, let's jump, and Keno's just like
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't swim. And it is a heartbreaking moment.
Speaker 1: Now we don't know what happens. We don't, but I
Speaker 1: think we're led to believe, and certainly because of episode eleven,
Speaker 1: we're led to believe that keno does not mean yeah
Speaker 1: and something.
Speaker 3: Really important and like if you're someone who loved when
Speaker 3: we used to do really deep dive easter egg kind
Speaker 3: of breakdowns into stuff. Episode ten is the first episode
Speaker 3: where we get some little things that are a little
Speaker 3: bit more than like visual nods. So something very interesting
Speaker 3: here is that when they show the prison and out
Speaker 3: of each of the bays where the ships would dock,
Speaker 3: people are throwing themselves out and swimming away. It's this
Speaker 3: it's the shape of an Imperial logo as we know
Speaker 3: them now, you know. So there's these little touches that
Speaker 3: are yeah, just unbelievable, and it's kind of this really
Speaker 3: interesting visual way of showing these people freeing themselves from
Speaker 3: the grips of the empire, like and the imperial this
Speaker 3: imperial prison on Narqina five.
Speaker 2: So for irp Qino, you are a real one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a there's a there's a quick
Speaker 1: moment in Luthen's shop. I was gonna say, where you
Speaker 1: see Padme's head piece. Yeah, her head dress, their ceremonial
Speaker 1: headdress that she wears. That's the first like prequels technical
Speaker 1: like easter egg that we that we have and it's
Speaker 1: an easter egg, but it's like it is emblematic of
Speaker 1: how ruthless the world and this system is. Now here
Speaker 1: is something that is a hallmark of you know, the
Speaker 1: culture of Naboo and of a beloved leader of that
Speaker 1: of that place, and her regalia is just like up
Speaker 1: for sale even ye can just go buy it. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: not even forget even in a museum people. This is yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just for private collectors, for rich people. It
Speaker 1: is just up for the highest bid or if you
Speaker 1: want to just walk into Luthen's and buy it. It
Speaker 1: is It's a heartbreaking display of what has happened to
Speaker 1: a lot of the galaxy. Luthen goes to this meeting.
Speaker 1: It's in some industrial kind of like area, of course
Speaker 1: far away and uh Luthen's contact is Lonnie, one of
Speaker 1: the ISB investigators that has been working closely with Deirdre.
Speaker 1: He has been apparently steadily burrowing into the ISB at
Speaker 1: Luthen's behest, steadily, you know, providing information to Luthen, who
Speaker 1: in turn has been we are guessing holding the man's
Speaker 1: family hostage somehow or at least threatening.
Speaker 3: I don't know knowledge he knows a lot about this
Speaker 3: man's family, and there is a lot of implied threats, yes,
Speaker 3: in what he is saying to to Lonnie.
Speaker 2: And it's unclear. It doesn't seem like Lutheren thinks Lonnie
Speaker 2: is a particularly good person.
Speaker 1: So it's uncare if this is he's just a valuable
Speaker 1: he's a valuable asset.
Speaker 3: I don't think this is a rebel who did a
Speaker 3: great job at weaseling his way in. I think this
Speaker 3: is an ISB agent that Lutheran is exploiting. And yes,
Speaker 3: he's about to find out something very useful, so like
Speaker 3: good for him.
Speaker 1: Right, So Luthen, of course, has been you know, front
Speaker 1: and center for Deirdre's investigation into Anton Kreeger and the
Speaker 1: spread of imperial kind of contraband stolen by rebels across
Speaker 1: the galaxy. He tells Luthen that okay, Uh, Deirdre is
Speaker 1: on Kreeger, and they know that Kreeger is planning a
Speaker 1: raid on spell House and the ISP is watching. They
Speaker 1: want him to raid it because they're going to sweep
Speaker 1: up that entire network.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: And he's like, okay, so I've given you this and
Speaker 1: I want out. That's what I'm done. It's getting too dangerous,
Speaker 1: like let me out, and h He's like, I've sacrificed
Speaker 1: so much for this, you know, Like, what have you sacrificed?
Speaker 1: If you gives one of the great beach in Star
Speaker 1: Wars ever ever, ever, he just is, what have I sacrificed?
Speaker 1: And he then goes on a monologue about I've you know,
Speaker 1: I've sacrificed my life. I'm sacrificing right now everything that
Speaker 1: I have for a sun that I'm never gonna see.
Speaker 1: He's psychology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's acknowledging that he has become a man who
Speaker 3: would and someone's fan by Master, he has become the
Speaker 3: thing that he hates, the thing he's trying to take down.
Speaker 3: He's you know, his morals, his values, everything gone, and
Speaker 3: he's basically living the worst kind of life in the
Speaker 3: hope that someone in the future can have a better life.
Speaker 3: And it's this is a really that line you said
Speaker 3: about where it's like, you know, I sacrificed everything. I've
Speaker 3: sacrificed hope for like a sunrise I'll never see. You know,
Speaker 3: that's such great foreshadowing of that moment in Rogue one
Speaker 3: at the end when Cassie and and Jin watched the
Speaker 3: sun you know, before it looks like the sun's coming
Speaker 3: up before everything kind of explodes. And yeah, that it's
Speaker 3: so funny because that circus has really had two of
Speaker 3: my favorite lines in this whole show, which is the
Speaker 3: still my favorite is the never more than twelve about
Speaker 3: the gods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in episode ten when he says I can't swim.
Speaker 3: That is just like heartbreaking and you think that nothing
Speaker 3: can like outdo that performance wise, and then Stellan Skarsgd
Speaker 3: just comes through at the like grimmest realist, most heartbreaking
Speaker 3: speech about like the realities and toil that it takes
Speaker 3: to make concrete change.
Speaker 1: And also so clear eyed in understanding that the game
Speaker 1: he is playing is so dangerous that there's no way
Speaker 1: he lives. No's I'm not going to live through this.
Speaker 2: And also it takes a long time. He's doing something
Speaker 2: that might happen twenty years from now. He sees it
Speaker 2: that things could change.
Speaker 1: And it ties back to the smallest moment in Return
Speaker 1: of the Jedi when mon Matha is talking about the
Speaker 1: raid on End or what they have to do, how
Speaker 1: they got these plans, and she says, you know, the
Speaker 1: many Bothams died to bring us this information, and it
Speaker 1: was like this window into this like bottomless tragedy that
Speaker 1: had had to take place in order to deliver this
Speaker 1: information to the to the rebel pilots in their leaders.
Speaker 1: And here we're getting, you know, looks like we're going
Speaker 1: through that window and seeing the smallest piece of that story,
Speaker 1: a version of that story where all these spies have
Speaker 1: like laid down their lives to overturn the Empire. And
Speaker 1: it's thrilling. It was just an it's incredible monologue. It
Speaker 1: just is like brings you to the edge of your seat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this episode is just such a powerhouse turn for
Speaker 3: everyone involved, the writers, the directors, the cast's it's so
Speaker 3: good and Diego does such a brilliant job the entire
Speaker 3: way through. He essentially has to. He's somebody having an
Speaker 3: awakening of what needs to be done, still not necessarily
Speaker 3: for the right reasons. He just wants to get back,
Speaker 3: see his family and get his money and escape. He
Speaker 3: is not all in on the rebellion, but at the
Speaker 3: same time, he hastes and he knows enough about what
Speaker 3: is right and wrong to know that he didn't just
Speaker 3: try and escape himself. He wanted everyone in the prison
Speaker 3: to get out. He wanted everyone to be freed. He
Speaker 3: wanted Keino to become the leader he could be. We're
Speaker 3: seeing the awakening of this angry, furious man that we
Speaker 3: meet in Rogue one, and it's it's very special. I
Speaker 3: love how much this series is also setting up that,
Speaker 3: remember how annoying Gin is to everyone because she's like, oh.
Speaker 2: You need his hope.
Speaker 3: All rebellions need a hope, and everyone's like, actually, no,
Speaker 3: like rebellions need a lot more than that. And it's
Speaker 3: been like really fucking hard to like make this happen.
Speaker 3: And I love how much context and kind of emotional.
Speaker 3: Hef this is bringing I'm waiting every week I watch this.
Speaker 3: I want to watch Rogue again, but I'm waiting till
Speaker 3: the finale next week.
Speaker 1: I'm saying I feel the same exact way, and I
Speaker 1: I too, have been holding off on watching it. So
Speaker 1: that brings us to episode eleven, Daughter of Ferikh, after
Speaker 1: their escape from the prison, Cassie and Andor and future
Speaker 1: Sergeant Melchie, who we will see in Rogue one as
Speaker 1: one of the one of the many soldiers that gave
Speaker 1: their lives, and the raid on scaiff cling to the
Speaker 1: side of a cliff, they're trying to evade Imperial patrols,
Speaker 1: and eventually the patrol goes away and they haul themselves up.
Speaker 1: But it just gives you a taste of the many,
Speaker 1: many risks that they are taking and continue to take
Speaker 1: as they flee from the prison on ur Kina FIV. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: on Ferres, we learned that Marva has passed, and Or's
Speaker 1: adopted mother, tib is be kidnapper also, which we should
Speaker 1: talk about, and we will talk about.
Speaker 2: She died.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know what, though, it is one
Speaker 1: thing I've been thinking about in this as we've been
Speaker 1: watching this like early days of the fight against the
Speaker 1: Empire kind of unfold. Is the fact that what we're
Speaker 1: kind of what you know, there's a Senate, there's a
Speaker 1: galactic Senate, right, but that I think we also shouldn't assume,
Speaker 1: even though we only know about the governments of a
Speaker 1: few of these places, that it's that we're talking about democracies.
Speaker 1: It's like it's a Senate made up of you know,
Speaker 1: mainly like nobles, royal houses, corporate interests. Yeah, like court
Speaker 1: planets that are completely run by corporations, like you know,
Speaker 1: God love them, but you're talking about like a royal
Speaker 1: lineage Like this is there's no actual democracy on a
Speaker 1: planet to planet level, and it's one of like because
Speaker 1: that's one of the one of the things I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about is, other than some of the flashbacks on phericks,
Speaker 1: you don't see protests, like mass protests against the Empire.
Speaker 1: I know that the Empire can blow up your fucking plant,
Speaker 1: I get it, but they're not everywhere at once, and
Speaker 1: you just don't see this kind of like mass uprising
Speaker 1: against the Empire. And part of you know, and I
Speaker 1: guess I've just been like asking myself why. And I
Speaker 1: think part of where I've come to is part of
Speaker 1: the reason why is the governments that the Empire supplanted
Speaker 1: were not in and of themselves the kind of governments
Speaker 1: that you could really protest safely against.
Speaker 3: Also definitely I agree, And I think that also the
Speaker 3: thing that's been really interesting to see about this and
Speaker 3: is very real to real world struggle is to get
Speaker 3: to that place where you have the million people marching
Speaker 3: against something kind of protest, you have to have multiple
Speaker 3: different people all around the world, the galaxy, the country,
Speaker 3: these little hubs of people who want to make where
Speaker 3: they live better, who want to make things better. And
Speaker 3: I think that and that can come together and coalesce
Speaker 3: it in a moment and a movement. But I think
Speaker 3: that kind of the interesting thing about Marva is like everyone,
Speaker 3: I would say, like the Mottrow of pretty much about
Speaker 3: every character in this show is like they're.
Speaker 2: Just trying their best.
Speaker 3: Like she she made a bad decision, but in the moment,
Speaker 3: it was the decision that she thought was best, and
Speaker 3: that Ficassian kind of ended up being a good thing.
Speaker 2: Even though I do think there's more to dig into, well,
Speaker 2: I well, I.
Speaker 1: Bring up I bring up the democracy angle and the
Speaker 1: lack of protest angle to say, and not in any
Speaker 1: kind of like what aboutism way that we the Republic
Speaker 1: was clearly imperfect. Look at Marva and you know, and
Speaker 1: her stealing a child from from a planet because of
Speaker 1: you know, the depredations of some kind of corporate power
Speaker 1: that was working under the aeges of the Republic on
Speaker 1: this planet. But it was better than the Empire. And
Speaker 1: we have yet to really dig into, other than those
Speaker 1: early episodes of this series, exactly how fucked up the
Speaker 1: Republic was. Like, we don't actually know exactly how fucked
Speaker 1: up the Republic was, and some like and as Saul
Speaker 1: super brittor Saul is noting the the kind of uh,
Speaker 1: the the early episodes of Tales of the Jedi in
Speaker 1: which we see like Count Dooku and and Qui gon
Speaker 1: Jin take down a corrupt center, we did. We we
Speaker 1: have yet to really get a real taste.
Speaker 3: Of that feels like something, It feels like something that
Speaker 3: they're leaning into that they want to get to, that
Speaker 3: they want to talk about. I mean, also, if we
Speaker 3: look at every character in Star Wars, they've gone against
Speaker 3: usually yeah, they're obviously against the Empire, the Empire is evil.
Speaker 3: They are like Nazis, Like that's bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, legitimately, they're blowing up entire planets.
Speaker 2: The well off our heroes.
Speaker 3: Will have that moment where they also everyone from amidala Qui,
Speaker 3: gon jin Obi wan Luke, you know, even like raym
Speaker 3: Finn Finn especially obviously as a somebody who left the stormshoopers.
Speaker 3: But they will also have that moment where they turn
Speaker 3: against the other side because they know that that's also
Speaker 3: not an immediate solution, like the solution has to come
Speaker 3: from the people rather than the republic or the empire
Speaker 3: or imperialism.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the imperfect again. I think that one
Speaker 1: of the things that and Or brings forth is that
Speaker 1: one of the primary differences between the Empire and the
Speaker 1: Republic is while the Republic maybe would prey on a
Speaker 1: planet and destroy its ecosystem like a bit at a time,
Speaker 1: the Empire will just do it all alone.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: Right, And that and while they're both and that's not
Speaker 1: a small distinction, like that's a real that's an actually
Speaker 1: that's like a major difference. Okay, continuing, so back on Ferix,
Speaker 1: Marva has passed. B is absolutely fucking distraught does not
Speaker 1: want to be left alone, wants Marva back. Is actually
Speaker 1: kind of doesn't truly believe that Marva's passed, seems like
Speaker 1: she's He's kind of like expecting her to walk back
Speaker 1: in through the door. Bee watches as Marva's body is
Speaker 1: taken away, trailed by well wishers from the community. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Sinta from the Aldanni crew and members of the ISB
Speaker 1: are also watching. They're not aware of each other, but
Speaker 1: they're both watching, and they're all watching and waiting for
Speaker 1: Cassian and Or to show up. Cassian and melchie back
Speaker 1: on Narkeina spot a ship. There's a couple of aliens nearby.
Speaker 1: They're working a fishing hole. Cassian is like, well, that's
Speaker 1: an older quad jumper, but I think I can fly it.
Speaker 1: Mel She's like great. He makes a run for the
Speaker 1: ship and Cassian has no choice but to follow, but
Speaker 1: the aliens are canny and they trigger a booby trap
Speaker 1: which capture the pair in this like gross kind of
Speaker 1: like snot net Deirdre at ISB he learns of Marve's death.
Speaker 1: The local Imperials that are stationed there on Pariks are
Speaker 1: like so the local townspeople are asking for a permit
Speaker 1: to have a parade for a funeral, a funeral parade,
Speaker 1: and like should be given to him, and Deirdre is like, yes,
Speaker 1: give them the permit, because I want bait to lure
Speaker 1: Cassian and or in. I know that he won't be
Speaker 1: able to resist going to his mother's funeral, So yes,
Speaker 1: give them the permit. Back on on Narkina, the Aliens
Speaker 1: are discussing what to do with Andor and Melchi. They
Speaker 1: realize that these two are escaped convicts from an imperial
Speaker 1: prison and that they all share a hatred of the Empire,
Speaker 1: so they let him loose and they're like, okay, where
Speaker 1: you want to go? And Or is like, take me
Speaker 1: back to Namos, the vacation planet. Val arrives at Lusen's shop,
Speaker 1: vow one of the Aldanni, you know that, leader of
Speaker 1: the al Donnie crew. So his girlfriend goes to Luthen's
Speaker 1: shop on Coruscant and wants to talk to Luthen. Claia
Speaker 1: is like, get the fuck out it. You shouldn't be here.
Speaker 1: This is not on schedule, this is against the rules.
Speaker 1: You're being very, very sloppy right now, get out of here.
Speaker 1: And VAL's like, I got important information I need to
Speaker 1: speak to Luthen right away, and she's trying to pull
Speaker 1: rank like I did fucking I did, al Donnie, what
Speaker 1: the hell have you done? And then Claya gives another
Speaker 1: one of these like great great monologues where you know
Speaker 1: where She's like, uh, I don't have lately, I have always.
Speaker 1: I have a constant blur of plate spinning and knives
Speaker 1: on the floor and needy, panicked faces at the window,
Speaker 1: of which you are but one of many. And she's like,
Speaker 1: but listen, what do you have with your information? And
Speaker 1: then val tell's with it, Marvit Cassian, and Or's mother
Speaker 1: has died. Tell Luthen, and Clay is like, I promise,
Speaker 1: I will let Luthan know. Meanwhile, on Ferrex, the ISP
Speaker 1: is tightening its surveillance of the and Or Home. Brasso,
Speaker 1: one of bix and and Ors colleagues on Feryx, is
Speaker 1: in the and Or home, straightening up, trying to comfort be.
Speaker 1: The droid again doesn't is unable to like process what
Speaker 1: is happening, has gone completely emotionally to pieces, and Brasso agrees,
Speaker 1: I'll stay here at the and Or home with you
Speaker 1: just for one night. This comsby a little bit elsewhere
Speaker 1: on Ferrex, Bix is reeling from the effects of the
Speaker 1: horrific interrogation that she was undergoing. The ISB take her
Speaker 1: to another room where they question her again, this time,
Speaker 1: you know, not under the kind of like genocide the
Speaker 1: sound treatment that they had been giving her previously, and
Speaker 1: they want to know if they show her a picture
Speaker 1: if Anton Creeker, this man that they're showing her is
Speaker 1: the man that she introduced Cassie and and or to
Speaker 1: and that he met with numerous times. Back on Coruscant,
Speaker 1: we don't actually know if she says yes, but you
Speaker 1: would imagine, I mean, like I would just probably.
Speaker 2: Just say yes. Also as well, it's not so you're
Speaker 2: sorry to that man actual saving.
Speaker 1: Although you wonder, I guess the other thing that would
Speaker 1: be going through your mind, right is if I give
Speaker 1: them this, do they need me anything?
Speaker 2: I da.
Speaker 1: Back on Coruscant, Val arrives at Mon Masma's house. Lda.
Speaker 1: Mon's daughter is apparently a budding young fascist, and we
Speaker 1: see her, you know, with the rest of her like schoolmates,
Speaker 1: doing some shit that is very troubling to Mon Mathma.
Speaker 1: Mon shares with Val the details of the particular buying
Speaker 1: she's in with regards to the money. Imperial inspectors are
Speaker 1: nosing around the various Chandriline accounts that that mon has managed,
Speaker 1: and at some point they're going to discover that there's
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand credits missing, that she moved, you know,
Speaker 1: to she moved to the rebels. She tells val that,
Speaker 1: you know, I reached out to Tay for help, and
Speaker 1: you know, we've been working to cover up the monies.
Speaker 1: She doesn't tell her tell her about Davos, which is
Speaker 1: probably wise, and then she said, but after all, Donnie,
Speaker 1: everything just got impossible and it's only a matter of
Speaker 1: time before the imperials figure out what's going on.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And VALA's like, does Lucan know, like how much trouble
Speaker 1: you're in? And she's like, no, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I you know, I don't think so. Mon then tells
Speaker 1: val that she's kind of found another way out, and
Speaker 1: she doesn't say his name, but we know that she's
Speaker 1: because she went down to rocket.
Speaker 2: By Fascist data coming through the door.
Speaker 1: Cyril gets to call at his mother's house from sergent Linus,
Speaker 1: his old buddy back to the corporation. Cyril's former colleague
Speaker 1: tells him that Okay, Cassie Ander's mother has died, and
Speaker 1: that the ISB and various groups on Coroissant, but probably
Speaker 1: the ies B appear to be taken an interest in
Speaker 1: this because a lot of calls back and forth from
Speaker 1: Ferris to Coroissant, and it seems like ANDERI might show
Speaker 1: up at the funeral back on Niamos and or sneaks
Speaker 1: into his former hotel room to retrieve his credits blaster
Speaker 1: and Keris's manifesto, which helpfully the various people who have
Speaker 1: been staying in this room have not found because he
Speaker 1: hit it like on a top shelf elsewhere in the galaxy.
Speaker 1: Luthen arrives at Sawgreer's hideout and guess what, Saw has
Speaker 1: changed his mind. Saun now wants to join Kreeger on
Speaker 1: the Spellhouse.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He was against it. He was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: this guy. Kreeger used to be a separatist back in
Speaker 1: the fucking Clone War days. I don't want to lie
Speaker 1: like with the guy likes up at Now He's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's fucking do it. We get the booty,
Speaker 1: we get to steal as much as we can from
Speaker 1: this imperial facility, and as long as Kreeger, you know,
Speaker 1: follows my rules, We're in on it. Tell him we're
Speaker 1: doing it, and Luthen's like, no, we can't, and so
Speaker 1: I was like, no, no, we're doing it, and he's
Speaker 1: like Lusen's like no, no, no, it's going tomorrow, like
Speaker 1: it's way too late, and so I was like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're ready now, like we can go. If it's in
Speaker 1: five minutes, we can go. We're locked and loaded, we're
Speaker 1: ready to go, and eventually is forced to say, listen,
Speaker 1: here's why the ISB are waiting on this rate. It's
Speaker 1: a fucking trap. And he's and Saw's like wait, so
Speaker 1: Kreeger doesn't know, and he's like no, so Sau said,
Speaker 1: you're willing to burn him. It's thirty men plus Kreeger,
Speaker 1: Luthern says, absolutely cold bloodedly, and this ruthless is absolutely
Speaker 1: shocked Saw, and he says, what if it was me?
Speaker 1: What if I was going? Luthern says, that'd be different.
Speaker 1: Kreeger doesn't know who I am, he has no connections
Speaker 1: to me. ISB can't track Kreeger back to me. He's
Speaker 1: fucking disposable. And Saw says, okay, well, what if I
Speaker 1: want to Warren Kreeger. What if I What if I
Speaker 1: do that? Luthern says, that's your choice, but it would
Speaker 1: risk everything else that we want to do. It would
Speaker 1: blow up everything. Think about it.
Speaker 4: The is B.
Speaker 1: If they take down Kreeger, they're gonna be arrogant. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be confident. There's gonna be a lot of space
Speaker 1: for us to operate because they're not going to know
Speaker 1: about us. They're going to think they have everything under control.
Speaker 1: If we warn Kreeger and he pulls off, they're gonna
Speaker 1: know that they have a leak somewhere in their information network,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna tighten up. They're gonna get They're gonna
Speaker 1: just batten down the hatches. It's gonna be very it's
Speaker 1: very very difficult. Saw gets paranoid. Now he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: if you have you have someone with Kreeger at isb
Speaker 1: Do you have someone here? And he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's wondering, like, dude, do you have someone in my group?
Speaker 1: Who is it? And Lusan says, yeah, it's Tubes. It's
Speaker 1: Bensic who otherwise known as Bensic but is nickname too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two Tubes and he's like he tells, He tells me everything,
Speaker 1: but of course this is all a ploy to get
Speaker 1: everybody excited so that he can then steal Tubes's blaster
Speaker 1: and point it at at Saw, and Saw is amazed
Speaker 1: and he's and it is incredible display of Luthen's resolve
Speaker 1: because Luthen saw it, Nos has to know that he
Speaker 1: can't get out of this, like, yeah, maybe you kill Saw,
Speaker 1: maybe you killed two Tubes, but you're not walking out
Speaker 1: of this place if you do that. And then is like, listen,
Speaker 1: this is just so you'll listen. Here's all the angles,
Speaker 1: and he again says all the reasons why they have
Speaker 1: to let Kreeger go down, and he says anyway, and
Speaker 1: he finishes up by saying, anyway, if I was ISB
Speaker 1: wouldn't I just let you go on the raid saw,
Speaker 1: and Saw says again thirty men plus Kreeger a marching
Speaker 1: to their desks for the greater good whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it, let's call it war, which is a
Speaker 1: just a chilling fucking le.
Speaker 2: The writing of this, we learn so much as well
Speaker 2: about Saw.
Speaker 3: This is a this is a big Sow episode because
Speaker 3: not only do we get this, but one of the
Speaker 3: aliens that and Or gets captured by is one of
Speaker 3: the Partisans who ends up being part of Source Partisans.
Speaker 2: At Sy said, OK, so you.
Speaker 3: Get a lot of we're learning not only why Saw
Speaker 3: hates everyone and is a part and it's just like
Speaker 3: off by himself, which understandable to be honest, but also
Speaker 3: kind of who he may be taking with him. So
Speaker 3: it's it's very interesting to see the way that the
Speaker 3: Empire and also people like Luthan can kind of push
Speaker 3: people into action.
Speaker 1: Well, it's it's it is a reflection of something that
Speaker 1: goes on like in real life. You know, we're used
Speaker 1: to Star Wars framing it as you know, rebels versus Empire,
Speaker 1: but here we're understanding and through the Clone Wars and Rebels,
Speaker 1: we're understanding that there were factions, there were schisms, there
Speaker 1: were different factions that had to team up. Like here
Speaker 1: saw his having to make the decision of going against
Speaker 1: some of his ideals in order to team up with
Speaker 1: someone Krieger, who politically he was absolutely against during the
Speaker 1: Clone Wars days, who was a separatist who was like
Speaker 1: not pro republic. And this is you know, I'm reading
Speaker 1: this book Opposing Power by Elvin Ong, and it's about
Speaker 1: out how opposition forces build alliances in the face of
Speaker 1: like autocracies and dictatorships. And it talks about like, you know,
Speaker 1: successful protest movements in the Philippines and the eighties and
Speaker 1: Korea also in the eighties, and how these groups, these
Speaker 1: opposition groups managed to to you know, revitalized democracy in
Speaker 1: those countries and over throw dictators because all of these
Speaker 1: opposition groups that didn't necessarily agree with each other politically decided, Okay,
Speaker 1: we actually need you have a good get out the
Speaker 1: vote network, I have like the ability to communicate to
Speaker 1: people on television. Therefore, and we both agree that this
Speaker 1: dictator needs to go. Therefore, we need to team up.
Speaker 1: And here we're seeing that happen in this fictional Star Wars,
Speaker 1: these these groups, you know, Sagrera saying, Okay, I can't
Speaker 1: do it alone. Fine, I'll team up with Kreeger. He's
Speaker 1: got to follow my rules, but we can do this.
Speaker 1: And that that's how we're seeing this rebellion kind of
Speaker 1: like slowly knit itself together. It's aristocratic people like Monnema
Speaker 1: and rich folks like Luthen, and these hard scrabble idealists
Speaker 1: like Saw and other people from who knows where, like Krieger,
Speaker 1: who politically, probably during the Clone Wars, could not have
Speaker 1: agreed on one single thing, all coming together now because
Speaker 1: they agree that the Empire's just got to fucking go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting to see them pushing this message
Speaker 3: of solidarity across like boundaries and the reality of how
Speaker 3: many people there are who agree on the problems with
Speaker 3: people in power, and how few people in power they
Speaker 3: actually are. That is the nature of the Nachina five escape.
Speaker 3: There's five thousand prisoners that should even could have happened
Speaker 3: any time, but they separate people so that they can't
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: They fight again.
Speaker 3: They made them fight against each other in this horrific
Speaker 3: idea of like, this person is doing well, so you're
Speaker 3: going to be punished for it, which we see in
Speaker 3: our real life.
Speaker 2: So I love that idea of.
Speaker 3: Reminding people that if you come together, even if you
Speaker 3: don't completely agree, you may be able to make things
Speaker 3: a little bit bad.
Speaker 2: It's a good message.
Speaker 1: There's also a really interesting subtext to this entire series
Speaker 1: that hasn't really been explored that much now, and it
Speaker 1: is the human supremacist angle to both the Empire. The
Speaker 1: Empire in particular, but also this kind of nascent rebellion
Speaker 1: less so with obviously saus partisans which include you know,
Speaker 1: alien fighters in that group, but you don't the empire
Speaker 1: is just humans, like it is, humans in prison, even
Speaker 1: the people they put in prison. They are not interested
Speaker 1: at all in aliens having any kind of agency in
Speaker 1: the upper levels of their leadership. And you know, it
Speaker 1: really underlines how impressive throngs rise in the imperial leadership
Speaker 1: is because this is not a group that is interested
Speaker 1: in anything that alien species have to do, or says
Speaker 1: that's it and can you help us smuggle shit? That's
Speaker 1: like that's basically it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Actually, now there's the cynical side of me can also
Speaker 1: say maybe it's budgetary, they just end of the budget fact,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that's the case because of how
Speaker 1: thought out this show really feels, and knowing what we
Speaker 1: know about Tony Gilder's writing, it seems like a very
Speaker 1: specific choice to highlight the human supremacist angle of the Empire,
Speaker 1: in particular. In space above Sauce Hideout, Luthen makes contact
Speaker 1: with Clea. They're speaking in code here because they they
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're unsure if they've been listened to,
Speaker 1: so they're using this kind of a dialogue to make
Speaker 1: it sound as if they're just talking about the shop
Speaker 1: and talking about the various things that they sell there.
Speaker 1: She is basically telling him that something is kind of
Speaker 1: off and you should come home as soon as possible
Speaker 1: because we need to adjust our plans a little bit.
Speaker 1: Then the signal breaks off, and it's because it's being
Speaker 1: jammed by an imperial patrol. Luthen is trying to talk
Speaker 1: his way out of it as the as the Empire
Speaker 1: is making contact with him, he gives a phony transponder
Speaker 1: scan out of Aldron. The ide absolutely checks out, but
Speaker 1: the imperiors are like, fuck it, we need the practice
Speaker 1: we need for They're so arrogant. This is like what
Speaker 1: we saw in Narcina five, where it's just like fuck it,
Speaker 1: arrest anybody who's going to stop them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who's going to still involved? At this point. They're masochists.
Speaker 1: They want to have absolutely, so Luthan preps his ship
Speaker 1: to make a run for it. He engages his countermeasures,
Speaker 1: shreds the Imperial tractor Dish takes out a handful of
Speaker 1: tie fighters on his way to hyperspace. It's absolutely its
Speaker 1: action scene, it's so good.
Speaker 3: And what he does is like a it's an EU
Speaker 3: staple where it's he he lets shrapnel out and it
Speaker 3: is caught in the track to be a minute, destroys
Speaker 3: the Imperial tractor, which is so cool, like so it's yeah, shrapnel.
Speaker 1: Just it's fucking great. And his it's his ship.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and the the Imperial ship is the they
Speaker 3: call it a Campwell Class, which is based on Colin
Speaker 3: Campwell art. So that's a cool nod, which I think
Speaker 3: our Discord will really like that one because they've been
Speaker 3: having a lot of fun with ships during this show.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's just like a really really
Speaker 1: great action scene and it lets you know also that
Speaker 1: Luthen is not surviving all of this time because he's gone.
Speaker 1: He's got lucky obviously, but he's also he's also thought
Speaker 1: all of this shit through. He's been doing this a while. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Cassian contacts Zen on Feryx and learns sadly that his
Speaker 1: mother is passed. He's absolutely stunned, and it's an incredible
Speaker 1: contrast to like the background of Niamo's through on this
Speaker 1: beautiful beach. The waves are crashing against the beach, this
Speaker 1: gentle kind of a shushing sound, and he walks over
Speaker 1: to Melchie and Melchi asks him, like about the call,
Speaker 1: and Cassian doesn't tell him what happened. Melchie is soaking
Speaker 1: in freedom, but also Melchie has become radicalized by this,
Speaker 1: by this whole thing, this the ordeal that they've been through.
Speaker 1: He says, like, you know, first he asks how many
Speaker 1: people do you think made it out? And they're like,
Speaker 1: and Cassian is like, not enough. And then mel She says, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have to tell people what's going on here. People
Speaker 1: have to know. We need to split up, double our
Speaker 1: chances of getting out and getting to someplace where we
Speaker 1: can speak the truth of what happened and here and
Speaker 1: let's get out of here. And they bid each other goodbye.
Speaker 1: Cassie and gives Melschie a blaster and they give this
Speaker 1: really like, I mean, I got choked up a little
Speaker 1: the way they part, because you just know that they're
Speaker 1: going to be together again. You understand also like how
Speaker 1: meaningful it is that they're fighting together on scaif in
Speaker 1: rogue one. And then they part and that's it that
Speaker 1: leads us, that leaves us the finale. What a show.
Speaker 1: This continues to be some of the best Star Wars
Speaker 1: any one has ever seen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good and okay, so let's think about it.
Speaker 3: The finale's coming up. Seems like it's going to take
Speaker 3: place at Marv's funeral. That seems like the most likely option.
Speaker 2: I wonder.
Speaker 3: Do you think, what do you think they're building in
Speaker 3: Nacina five? Because I think a lot of people were
Speaker 3: kind of in this space where they were like, is
Speaker 3: it the Death Star?
Speaker 2: Is it you know, something really important? Is it irrelevant?
Speaker 3: Tony Gilroy has recently in a couple of interviews basically
Speaker 3: kind of said it's not irrelevant. It's actually incredibly relevant
Speaker 3: to season two.
Speaker 2: And it does. Yeah, he was interviewed in.
Speaker 3: The Hollywood Reporter and he said, they're building season two.
Speaker 3: It's the spine of season two. I've heard all kinds
Speaker 3: of things, and it's great, all of the material that
Speaker 3: the Empire has. I look at everything and think economically,
Speaker 3: how does this work? Who built Scariff?
Speaker 2: How do you build that?
Speaker 3: How do you build ether? How do you build the
Speaker 3: Death Star? And the armada of ships? There's a lot
Speaker 3: of things that need to be built, and there's an
Speaker 3: incredible amount of material, So to me, what they're building
Speaker 3: is not as important as the scale of it. But
Speaker 3: he said they're building the spine of season two, so
Speaker 3: I'm very interested.
Speaker 1: Well, I this I've been wondering all season as well.
Speaker 1: And the ship that intercepts luth and made me wonder. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it could be anything, and it could be the Death
Speaker 1: Star and it could be ad Ats, but I'm I
Speaker 1: was wondering if it's not because we haven't seen them yet,
Speaker 1: some kind of star destroyer class. Oh, that would be
Speaker 1: really interesting and could be because we haven't seen them yet.
Speaker 2: That's a huge high stakes, but it's not the Death Star. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Tony actually like debunked one of the theories that I
Speaker 3: loved the most, which was so bleak and definitely was
Speaker 3: like one, I just think it's so good because it's
Speaker 3: so in tone of the show.
Speaker 2: Somebody a lot of really popular fan theory was that
Speaker 2: every room is just building the next room.
Speaker 1: How that is like legitimately the bleakest thing, so.
Speaker 3: Sad, and Tony was like, that's so bleak but so
Speaker 3: good paraphrasing, But yeah, that was not the case.
Speaker 2: So I love that idea. I think the Star. I
Speaker 2: think tm x ray looking at the chats, I think
Speaker 2: we're all in on the Star Destroyer.
Speaker 3: I think that is I think that's a really great
Speaker 3: call because also one Star destroyer building, one Star destroyer,
Speaker 3: destroying one Star destroyer trying to stop a Star destroyer.
Speaker 3: That is a very doable twelve episode arc. I would
Speaker 3: be very interested to see if that's what it is,
Speaker 3: especially the reading that we've done the books that we love,
Speaker 3: like Claudia Gray.
Speaker 2: Lost Stars.
Speaker 3: I always shout it out, but that's a really interesting
Speaker 3: book takes place over the three original trilogy films with
Speaker 3: new characters and kind of what the day to day
Speaker 3: of their lives looks like in the Rebellion and in
Speaker 3: the Empire, and I can kind of imagine them going
Speaker 3: for that kind of like here's what, you know, digging
Speaker 3: into what Andor's done, so while showing the bureaucracy and
Speaker 3: the little people who are behind these things, the people
Speaker 3: like Cyril who work doing one job that seems totally
Speaker 3: disconnected to the horrors of the Empire, but are exactly
Speaker 3: still tools of it. And the one person in the
Speaker 3: Rebellion who does even know they're in the Rebellion, who
Speaker 3: just helps someone out because they think it's the right
Speaker 3: thing to do, and then that person goes on to
Speaker 3: lead it. I mean, I think that's so interesting, and
Speaker 3: I think the Start Destroyer could be a great landscape
Speaker 3: for that to take place in season two.
Speaker 1: Well, we've got more and Or coming up up next,
Speaker 1: a conversation with and Or creator Tony Gilroy. X ray
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Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash x ray. Indeed dot com
Speaker 1: slash x ray terms and conditions apply. Need to hire
Speaker 1: you need Indeed. Welcome to the High Mind, where we
Speaker 1: explore a topic in more detail with the help of
Speaker 1: expert guests. This week we are thrilled to have Tony
Speaker 1: gilroy Oscar nominated writer and director and the creator of
Speaker 1: and Or. Note. We recorded this interview while Rosie and
Speaker 1: I were on the road. Apologies in advance if the
Speaker 1: audio quality is not quite up to x ray vision
Speaker 1: top top standards. Tony, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that's really knocked Rosie
Speaker 1: and I out about your story is how it shows
Speaker 1: how regular people, not necessarily you know, Jedi, space wizards, etc.
Speaker 1: Would get enmeshed in a fight like this would either
Speaker 1: rebel or decide to join the forces that would oppress
Speaker 1: the rebellion. What was the genesis of this story?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean it started from, you know, the concept
Speaker 4: from lucasfilm, which was that they were interested in doing
Speaker 4: a prequel from Rogue one and doing you know, the
Speaker 4: five years of Cassian and or story before Rogue one,
Speaker 4: and so that was that was the very first That
Speaker 4: was the that was the buy in, and then you know,
Speaker 4: what's your version of that? I think they tried. They
Speaker 4: did try a couple other versions of it with different approaches.
Speaker 4: My attitude about it, sort of from the sidelines along
Speaker 4: the way, was it seems to me it's pretty obvious
Speaker 4: what you have to do if you have this incredibly
Speaker 4: accomplished character in Rogue one, who is, you know, the
Speaker 4: tactical leader, the person that the Alliance trusts to go
Speaker 4: on the most important mission possible, and a guy who
Speaker 4: exhibits all these incredible leadership skills along the way tactically
Speaker 4: and he changes his mind and he lies and he
Speaker 4: does all the things that a leader has to do
Speaker 4: on a mission like that, and then the guy gives
Speaker 4: his life for every willingly, But who is that person?
Speaker 4: So my idea is I said, well, you want if
Speaker 4: you're gonna do a show about that person, you know,
Speaker 4: either going what's going to happen to, then you want
Speaker 4: to take them as far away from that as possible
Speaker 4: five years ago. You want to have a show about becoming. Yeah,
Speaker 4: on our show in in many ways is about becoming.
Speaker 4: It's a revolution becoming a revolution. It's about Cacinando becoming
Speaker 4: a revolutionary and then becoming a leader. It's about a
Speaker 4: lot of people becoming different things.
Speaker 3: So and when it came to you knew you were
Speaker 3: going to show the becoming. So when it came to
Speaker 3: building the world, one of the things that's kind of
Speaker 3: blown us away. Star Wars has always been analogous, but
Speaker 3: this feels like a show that has a lot of
Speaker 3: very radical things to stay about building a rebellion and
Speaker 3: the becoming of a rebellion, and the kind of world
Speaker 3: that encourages a rebellion, a world with horrific prison labor,
Speaker 3: you know, a world that oppresses the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2: Could you speak a little bit about building that world
Speaker 2: that would encourage Cassian to become the person that we see.
Speaker 4: In Rogue Wan Well, canonically in Star Wars, in the
Speaker 4: five years, I have a five year tranche of history
Speaker 4: to take care of. I have a five year calendar,
Speaker 4: so I know what happens in those five years. I
Speaker 4: don't really have to spend very much time thinking about
Speaker 4: anything else. It's and so I have to Those five
Speaker 4: years are canonically clear to me. There's no question of
Speaker 4: the established atrocities and motivations of an empire, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: that's you know, and we know we know how how
Speaker 4: bitter and horrifying and genocidal the battle will ultimately be,
Speaker 4: and how you know, devastating it will be to Alderon
Speaker 4: and everything else. So you know all that. But all
Speaker 4: that said, I do never start anything with an agenda.
Speaker 4: I start with characters, and I have my still beliefs
Speaker 4: that I hope will you know, in some way osmodically
Speaker 4: you know, work their way through. But I don't ever
Speaker 4: think about, oh, I have an extra grind about this,
Speaker 4: I'm going to talk about this or I didn't start
Speaker 4: Michael Clayton because I wanted to do a story about
Speaker 4: industrial uh you know industrial uh, you know, atrocity. I
Speaker 4: started because I was like, oh, the guy is a
Speaker 4: fixture and what happens is so I'm really interested in
Speaker 4: the characters and I and I've learned over time that
Speaker 4: it works for me and it's just what I'm interested.
Speaker 4: I start very very small, and I build my way out.
Speaker 4: I know there's been a lot of you know, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of political I've been watching. You know, the
Speaker 4: conversation is fascinating to watch all the conversations that the
Speaker 4: show is you know, engendered over the past couple of months.
Speaker 4: But and I know the show there's all kinds of
Speaker 4: people that trying to lay claim in different ways to
Speaker 4: the politics of the show. But you know, to me,
Speaker 4: I've been studying history just as an amateur, as an
Speaker 4: idiot Amazon, you know, a idiots home, a DIY historian
Speaker 4: for years. And you know, there isn't anything in our
Speaker 4: show that hasn't been going on for three thousand years.
Speaker 4: I mean, colonialism, it's same oppression, harm, behavior, torture or whatever.
Speaker 4: It's all there. So the great thing about this show
Speaker 4: is you can sort of needle drop and do a
Speaker 4: I could take we can take something from the it
Speaker 4: takes something from heres, the Russian Revolution. So that's all.
Speaker 4: That's the beauty of it, and that's but my way
Speaker 4: in is really through character, what happens next to the
Speaker 4: people you care about, and making you care about.
Speaker 1: Them, thinking about your work, you know, from the cutting
Speaker 1: edge all the way up through the board. I love
Speaker 1: the cutting edge. Just ye, come on, why I.
Speaker 4: Don't think that's been fully analyzed. Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1: That's the episode. But you know, like thinking about your
Speaker 1: working that way. It's often these characters who find themselves,
Speaker 1: for one reason or another, in a context that they
Speaker 1: were not necessarily prepared for, and now they have to
Speaker 1: make do with what they have. You have the ice
Speaker 1: skater that you know, the hockey player who now can
Speaker 1: no longer play hockey, now has to do figure skating.
Speaker 1: You have the spy who you know was brainwashed but
Speaker 1: now has their agency back and they're cut loose in
Speaker 1: the world. In Michael Clayton, you have a guy who's
Speaker 1: you know, the scales fall from his eyes. He's a
Speaker 1: fixer for much bigger figures and realizes he's caught between
Speaker 1: these two worlds of power and powerlessness and his morality
Speaker 1: looking at looking at and or in that in that
Speaker 1: kind of context, I'm really struck by how it's uh
Speaker 1: it seems like and I know you say you don't
Speaker 1: you know, start with you know, with any with any
Speaker 1: kind of like agenda. But I wonder if you might say,
Speaker 1: if you might talk about how you build a character
Speaker 1: and you know where this kind of character falls, and
Speaker 1: the kind of characters that you've that you've that you've
Speaker 1: built in the past. I love cutting edge again.
Speaker 4: I mean, hopefully they're all unique. I mean, every single
Speaker 4: one of them wants to be you know, bespoke and
Speaker 4: and they want to be their own thing. I mean
Speaker 4: I think that, uh, I think I've come to believe
Speaker 4: over time that uh that, uh, the single most important
Speaker 4: part of this is empathy. And you really you have
Speaker 4: to be ridiculously empathetic to all of the people that
Speaker 4: you're building and very and really care about them. Doesn't
Speaker 4: matter if they're you know, or synchronic or or or
Speaker 4: or or you know or Doug Dorsey in the in
Speaker 4: the you gotta get in there, you know, you got
Speaker 4: to really live it with them, and you gotta really so.
Speaker 4: I I don't have a holistic answer to that. I
Speaker 4: have a very personal every one of them is a
Speaker 4: little temple and they're all you know, that makes it
Speaker 4: sound pretentious and bullshitty, but like they're all they're all
Speaker 4: real to me, and and and they all they couldn't
Speaker 4: sound like anybody other than themselves. And I think you
Speaker 4: can always tell that when you read someone's writing. You know,
Speaker 4: if you read a writer and if all the characters
Speaker 4: sort of sound the same, or if someone's IQ goes
Speaker 4: up and down based on what they want the story
Speaker 4: to do or whatever, then you know you're with somebody
Speaker 4: who's not maybe maybe not. Uh, I'm not not sticking
Speaker 4: to the rigor of that. Good writing is really where
Speaker 4: the writers are invested in the people so much that
Speaker 4: they could only.
Speaker 1: Do what they do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And something that I found like really unique as
Speaker 3: from a writing standpoint of Ander is this choice of
Speaker 3: the arcs and kind of telling these small stories within
Speaker 3: the bigger kind of season. Could you talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about that choice and kind of the why that
Speaker 3: felt like the best route to go.
Speaker 4: Well, a lot of people, do you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: we started out there with people I remember, you know,
Speaker 4: it used to be I did my tone to television
Speaker 4: over the last twenty thirty years, and network television a
Speaker 4: couple of times try to do things and then the
Speaker 4: dictum always was, Oh, your first episode has to be
Speaker 4: your twentieth episode, Your first episode has to be I mean,
Speaker 4: that was really what the old system was. And then
Speaker 4: you know, and then you move into a more you know,
Speaker 4: as the stories have gotten more long term and you know,
Speaker 4: and more complicated, there's a different kind of structure for
Speaker 4: how they work. But I don't think that there's any
Speaker 4: any clear I think everybody's doing everything for the first
Speaker 4: time now. In many ways, I think we're just at
Speaker 4: the frontier of streaming and we're watching these huge shows.
Speaker 4: I mean, these are the beginning of something really new.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's any rule about what to do.
Speaker 4: And the way our show laid out, it was like, well, coincidentally,
Speaker 4: directors direct three episodes for us, the directors come in
Speaker 4: and they direct a block of three. So it sort
Speaker 4: of became a weird organizing principle in its own way,
Speaker 4: and you kind of lean into it a little bit.
Speaker 4: We're not perfect because you see in seven we drop
Speaker 4: and seven is a standalone that episode and then a
Speaker 4: kine and ten and then our last two episodes will
Speaker 4: be sort of of a piece a little bit. I
Speaker 4: guess we're not I don't think we're like, we're not.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not it's not this rigorous, strict thing.
Speaker 4: It's kind of the way it laid out and kind
Speaker 4: of the way it worked for the directors. And I
Speaker 4: think that there are no rules. I think the main
Speaker 4: rule is do you want to see what happens next?
Speaker 4: That's yeah, yeah, that's the rule that matters, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, you mentioned dipping your toe on TV before.
Speaker 1: Obviously this is a TV property. You've moved from screenwriting
Speaker 1: to directing and now you're showrunner working with directors. What's
Speaker 1: that transition been like and how does it change your
Speaker 1: perspective as a person who's telling stories.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll talk about I want to talk about the
Speaker 4: directing thing, because that's an old story for you. But
Speaker 4: the show running thing is nastly because I was going
Speaker 4: to direct the first three episodes of this and I
Speaker 4: was like, Okay, that's what I'm here for, and I'll
Speaker 4: do this and then I'll get them, and then you know,
Speaker 4: you realize what the gig is. And it was just
Speaker 4: incredibly naive and and COVID really saved our show because
Speaker 4: we got we got completely shut down and just everything
Speaker 4: just went on hold. For six or seven months and
Speaker 4: I couldn't come back to London. I didn't want to
Speaker 4: come back to London and direct in the midst. There
Speaker 4: was no vaccine or anything like that at that point,
Speaker 4: and it just turned into like, okay, let's and I
Speaker 4: started rewriting my episodes and rewriting everybody else's episodes and
Speaker 4: tuning everything up. And came time to hire directors, and
Speaker 4: it's I've never hired director before. And that's a really
Speaker 4: that's a really fascinating I didn't take it quite as
Speaker 4: seriously in the beginning as I think I thought it
Speaker 4: would be easier. It's very very difficult. You have to
Speaker 4: watch lots of stuff, incredible amount of stuff. You have
Speaker 4: to find a way to parse your way through it.
Speaker 4: There's an incredible amount of competition between shows because there's
Speaker 4: so many shows. Really hard to get directors, and it's
Speaker 4: really there's a limited number of directors who have you know,
Speaker 4: we need directors who have a certain amount of flight time.
Speaker 4: You know, you can't this is like flying a seven
Speaker 4: forty seven. You can't just get so so we have
Speaker 4: a different criteria than they had to be. It was,
Speaker 4: it was it's very unanticipatedly difficult. We lucked out the
Speaker 4: first time around. I think we've lucked out this time around.
Speaker 4: We have we have three new directors that are coming
Speaker 4: back for this for this the second half. We start
Speaker 4: shooting in November. But man, it's it's I'll tell you
Speaker 4: one thing, it's the competition is really really tough to
Speaker 4: find that not to if you have a smaller show
Speaker 4: where you could swing away and be loose, you know,
Speaker 4: but you can't figure out how to do this show
Speaker 4: on the job, right, It's just like too many people
Speaker 4: have just drowned.
Speaker 1: So the.
Speaker 4: Then diagram of what you're looking for, it's and then
Speaker 4: everybody's after the same people.
Speaker 2: So it was very tricky and it was such a
Speaker 2: like long like you talked about, you know, being shut
Speaker 2: down by COVID, this new experience of a show where
Speaker 2: a searching for these directors. How did it? And obviously
Speaker 2: the nature of filming a show like this is very
Speaker 2: different to a smaller film or a smaller show. How
Speaker 2: did it feel once you started to see the fully.
Speaker 3: Finished episodes and kind of see the end of that
Speaker 3: first part of the journey of making the first season?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, quite honestly, I have to I mean,
Speaker 4: I've been on it for three years now, and in
Speaker 4: the middle of it, you know, I'll be honest, you
Speaker 4: just wondering what did I do to my life?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I mean, seriously, is it
Speaker 4: worth it? I mean, many days agoing like what have
Speaker 4: I done? I could be doing anything I want to do,
Speaker 4: I can do to right and to play, I could
Speaker 4: make a movie. What am I doing? What did I
Speaker 4: do to my life? Is it worth it? And it
Speaker 4: really really wasn't until you know, about a year ago
Speaker 4: we really did start to put the episodes together in
Speaker 4: a kind of way that we could actually sort of
Speaker 4: and solve some of the you know, really some of
Speaker 4: the visual effects started coming in, we started do stuff,
Speaker 4: and my brother John is sort of the over the
Speaker 4: post production overlord. So you know, once the show started
Speaker 4: to come together and we could look at them in
Speaker 4: a whole piece and have other people outside of our
Speaker 4: little tiny community look at them, it started to be like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, maybe this was really worth it. And
Speaker 4: that's the feeling more than anything else, of like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, I haven't wasted the last three years, because
Speaker 4: it really there's times along the way where you you
Speaker 4: could get on a movie. You could be on a
Speaker 4: movie and you could hate the people that you're in
Speaker 4: business with, or you could whatever. You could survive it.
Speaker 4: Now it seems making a movie seem nothing. This is
Speaker 4: like you're just oh my god, I'm on a whaling
Speaker 4: version a whaling pot by eighty and how am I
Speaker 4: ever going to get back to Nantucket?
Speaker 1: You know? Well, Tony, you've made something really really incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're big fans of your work, and congratulations on the show.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to see how it ends. All right,
Speaker 1: thank you, have a good day. Big thank you to
Speaker 1: Tony Gilroy and Rosie Knight for joining us on X
Speaker 1: ray Vision. Rosie, what do you have to plug? Plug?
Speaker 3: Plug?
Speaker 1: Plug plugs.
Speaker 2: Tony's not here, so I will say watch and Or,
Speaker 2: and the and the Cutting Edge because we talked about
Speaker 2: so much on that interview. For me, you can find
Speaker 2: me Rosie Marx at Instagram and letterbox.
Speaker 3: I am here every week. I will be having some
Speaker 3: cool comment but news to talk about. You can read
Speaker 3: my writing at Polygon, of Geek, ign, Nudice, a bunch
Speaker 3: of different places, and I now have officially migrated my website.
Speaker 2: So my website is Rosienight dot com. If you want
Speaker 2: to look at some check.
Speaker 3: It out.
Speaker 1: Crash Sash web press some quick updates and news. Xtra
Speaker 1: Vision will be taking a well earned break for Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: next week. We hope you're all able to do that
Speaker 1: as well, so catch the next episode on December second,
Speaker 1: where we'll be diving into the finale of and or
Speaker 1: lots of and or discussion that week. Plus, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be hosting a panel and a live podcast recording at
Speaker 1: LA Comic Con on Saturday, December third, from eleven thirty
Speaker 1: to one pm Pacific and Panel Room four or two.
Speaker 1: More information on that to come, and you can find
Speaker 1: that through the show notes. But again, if you're in
Speaker 1: LA in the first week of December and you want
Speaker 1: to come through, come check it out, Come meet us,
Speaker 1: come talk to us. It'll be fun. Check out the
Speaker 1: La Comic Con app website plus the show notes for
Speaker 1: specifics again and tickets if you want to come see
Speaker 1: the live taping of x ray Vision. Five star reviews.
Speaker 1: We gotta have them, we love them, we need them,
Speaker 1: we can't live without them. Here is Matt Morichie Rosie
Speaker 1: Night is amazing there, great tandem and really appreciate the
Speaker 1: branding as well. Five stars.
Speaker 3: Thank you Matt, Thank you Matt, and thank you to
Speaker 3: the people who designed off branding, which is really cool.
Speaker 1: And then finally some other housekeeping notes. X Ravision is
Speaker 1: going to be going to two episodes at an undisclosed
Speaker 1: data in the future. We're figuring that out right now,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be in the more medium term
Speaker 1: than the longer term, certainly. And thanks to all of
Speaker 1: you reached out and have expressed sadness at the ending
Speaker 1: of takeline. It's so delighted that everybody listened to it,
Speaker 1: and it was a pleasure to give all of you
Speaker 1: some of the most fun sports content I thought out there,
Speaker 1: and it will free up time for all of us
Speaker 1: to do other stuff. Thank you for your kind words.
Speaker 1: Also thanks for everyone who wished me a happy birthday
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. That was so delightful, That
Speaker 1: was so nice. X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy's Rhard Are.
Speaker 1: Editing and sound designers by Vascillis Fatopoulos, Dilon Villanueva and
Speaker 1: Matt to group provide video production support. Alex Rollaford handle
Speaker 1: social media. Thank you Brian Vasquez for a theme music.
Speaker 1: See it in two weeks.
Speaker 6: Hey, Mike, it's Hisenough for Marine. I want to talking
Speaker 6: about not Tina five today. First of all, absolutely is
Speaker 6: despicle what was going on? Then, Mike, you know, we
Speaker 6: the Galaxy's got to know about the things that are
Speaker 6: going on. That's absolutely terrible. But I just gotta say this, Keino,
Speaker 6: First of all, I hope you survived. I don't know
Speaker 6: if you survived. But just to anybody who's watching this
Speaker 6: is hearing this right now, swim is not that hard. Guys, like,
Speaker 6: don't be so nervous about it. He's getting this.
Speaker 1: Here's what it is. Kick your legs and then just
Speaker 1: like move your arms. That's it. That's it.
Speaker 6: You did it for nine months in your mother's womb.
Speaker 6: You could do it again. It's not that hard.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: I'm not saying it's not a lot a long distance
Speaker 6: to swim. But Keino, don't be scared of it. You
Speaker 6: survive not Keenu five. You can survive this. Just kick
Speaker 6: your legs, all right. I'll take my hands off to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you,