‘Andor' Creator on That Stunner 'Genocide' Speech and Its Real-Life Inspiration
Great sci-fi often serves as an allegory for current social and political issues.
But never before has Star Wars hit such a topical bullseye — intentional or not — as Tuesday's episodes of Andor season two when a character delivered a stunner speech that warned of rising government authoritarianism, the dilution of fact-based reality, and the reluctance to use the word 'genocide.'
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Airing on Disney+ the same day a Drudge Report headline became the latest to warn of 'America's Slide Into Authoritarianism,' the acclaimed drama series featured a sequence where the courageous politician Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) risks her life to deliver a speech before the Galactic Senate where she furiously attacked Emperor Palpatine and his Imperial forces. But one can also easily imagine her words being said by a politician on C-SPAN right now.
'I believe we are in crisis,' Mothma says. 'The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.'
And then, referring to a prior sequence where Imperial forces massacred peaceful protesters on the planet Ghorman — a world the Imperials invaded to exploit a precious mineral — Mothma says, 'What took place yesterday… was unprovoked genocide.'
At this, the other senators cry out in protest at Mothma's use of the word. 'Yes, genocide!' she repeated. 'And the monster screaming the loudest, that we helped create, the monster who will come for us all, soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.'
It's worth noting that Andor season two began production in November 2022 and wrapped around February 2024. So filming was completed long before the reelection of Donald Trump and just a few months after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 (the latter having sparked much debate among experts over the last two years — such as here and here — over the right or wrongness of using the word 'genocide' when describing Israel's military response in Gaza). Nonetheless, the scene has some viewers on social media interpreting the moment as pro-Palestinian.
Asked about the sequence and its real-life inspirations, Andor creator Tony Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter, 'The really sorry truth about the about this question — and we get it a lot — is that peace and prosperity and calm are the rarities. Those are rarities throughout the last 6,000 years of recorded history. You could drop this show at any point in the last 6,000 years, and it would make sense to some people about what's happening to them.'
Continued Gilroy: 'I mean, the control of truth has always been a scabbard of power. Power dictates the narrative, and always has tried to always do that. Look at what the Empire does to Ghorman with their propaganda campaign. The very first scene [in the season] that Krennic has where he talks about Ghorman, that's based on the Wannsee convention — the convention where the Nazis got together and planned the final solution over a business lunch. You could say all this about the Gulf of Tonkin — which got America into Vietnam — or you could say the burning of the Reichstag [which paved the way to the Nazi's rise to power], or you could say the sinking of the Lusitania [which pushed America into World War I]. You go all the way through history, and power is the control of truth. So I think with that speech, we were looking to be timeless and classic.'
Added the creator, a bit wearily, 'And I'm not psychic.'
The second and final season of the Star Wars drama has been not pulling punches when it comes to depicting a wartime drama. In addition to that Wannsee convention scene (see the real-life photos and how closely the Andor setting matched up), the show made headlines during its premiere episodes by staging the first rape attempt in Star Wars content in a scene involving Bix (Adria Arjona).
'I get one shot to tell everything I know — or can discover, or that I've learned — about revolution, about battles, with as many incidents and as many colors as I can get in there, without having [the story] tip over,' Gilroy said about the latter sequence. 'I mean, let's be honest, man: The history of civilization, there's a huge arterial component of it that's rape. All of us who are here — we are all the product of rape. I mean armies and power throughout history [have committed rape]. So to not touch on it, in some way… It just was organic and it felt right, coming about as a power trip for this guy. I was really trying to make a path for Bix that would ultimately lead to clarity — but a difficult path to get back to clarity.'
Andor Disney+'s acclaimed Star Wars drama series which currently has the highest rating of any Star Wars TV show or movie on Rotten Tomatoes. The show follows the adventures of Rebel Alliance leader Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and leads up to the events in the film Rogue One. The final three episodes air next week.
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