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Gizmodo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The Real-World Places Behind ‘Andor' Season 2's Architectural Marvels
Andor, the live-action Star Wars prequel series created by Tony Gilroy and starring Diego Luna, concluded its second and final season last month. Spanning the years prior to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the series has garnered massive praise from Star Wars fans and critics alike for its deft storytelling, stirring lead performances, and majestic setpieces. This is especially true in the show's second season, which sees the former thief-turned-rebel-fighter on the run for his life while working as an agent saboteur and covert operative for Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), a spymaster laying the groundwork for what will eventually become the rebel alliance first glimpsed in the original Star Wars. From the wafting wheat fields of Mina-Rau and the cosmopolitan grandeur of the Ghorman Plaza, to the sprawling ecumenopolis of Coruscant, every location feels as lived-in as it is visually breathtaking. Coruscant, in particular, takes on renewed resonance in Andor season two. First glimpsed on-screen in a scene added to the 1997 re-release of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, the capital of the Galactic Republic and later Empire appears much as it did in the prequel trilogy—a bricolage of glittering skyscrapers, Brutalist support columns, and endless lanes of hovercrafts tracing the sky like ley lines of iridescent silver—albeit rendered with a more practical heft and tactile depth than in any incarnation seen before. Andor's take on Coruscant took inspiration from many real-life architectural sights, specifically the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain. 'In the middle of season one [of Andor], I sort of identified certain architectural styles that would work for Coruscant like Santiago Calatrava and Zaha Hadid,' Andor production designer Luke Hull told io9. 'I did a big location scouting trip before we went into production for season two, just to buildings I always found interesting and had good shape language for Star Wars. That took me to Paris, to Barcelona and Madrid, and even Portugal, and we looked at Valencia as well. So it was kind of a little bit of a weird European road trip, some of which was kind of a good reference, and some of which was like, 'Wow, I wish we could film here,' but we're not sure what [Andor season two] was yet. And then some of it was like, 'Okay, this really has the bones of something 'Upper Coruscant' about it,' which is what I thought Valencia had.' Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, the futuristic 350,000-square-meter educational and cultural complex was built along the dry bed of the old Turia River, which was drained and diverted following a flood which devastated the nearby city in 1957. The project broke ground in 1991, with the first building, the Hemesferic—Spain's largest cinema and planetarium—opening in 1998. The complex was expanded over the next decade, with the most recent building, the Agora Plaza, completed in 2009. 'With this location in Valencia, you could just walk around in every corner of it, [and it] looked like Coruscant,' ILM visual effect supervisor Mohen Leon said in an interview for 'We ended up shooting so much and it perfectly meshed into our whole approach of trying to ground everything in locations, and then just enhance and augment them. So this location specifically really felt very upscale and formal in a way that you could believe that this could be government offices.' Fans of Andor will recognize the Prince Felipe Science Museum, a large building buffeted by large skeletal rib-like columns, as one of the centerpieces of the plaza adjourning the Imperial Senate Building, particularly for its appearance in season two's ninth episode, where Cassian Andor is tasked with rescuing Senator Mon Mothma from being arrested by the ISB. The Senate plaza wasn't the only location based on the City of Arts and Science, however, as two more locations—Davo Sculdun's palatial skyscraper seen in episode six and the final meeting place of Luthen Rael and his ISB mole Lonni Jung—were based on the Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts and the adjourning Montolivet Bridge, respectively. 'We knew we were going to only use up to a certain point on the plaza for the Senate anyway,' Hull told io9. 'Because we were going to put the Senate offices, basically, where the building was that we ultimately used for Davo Sculdun's building, we replaced that with the Senate offices. So then we were like, well, this building is up for grabs.' Hull added, 'I just really loved this idea that you could treat the bit at the front [of the Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts] as a sort of landing pad. You really feel all of Coruscant around you as you kind of bring the limo down. It's very glamorous and Bond-esque to kind of arrive that way and then also be able to see the partygoers through the glass from outside. It's kind of rare that you get this opportunity. I love filming on location anyway, but I've always fought very hard to try and film on location because I do think it gives us scope that CGI can't give. CGI can give scale, but it can't give scope all the time.' The same fastidious level of attention was also given to the costume designs of the people within the Senate. Michael Wilkinson, the costume designer for Andor, worked hand in hand with Hull to craft clothing for the senators and staff that felt grounded with complexity and reality. '[Coruscant] is a really good example, because you have so many different types of people at the Senate, and the audience has to very quickly understand who's who and who's doing what,' Wilkinson told io9. 'So we have senators at the very top of the pyramid; they're from all different corners of the galaxy and represent lots of different cultures. So we had to sort of try and express that through their clothing. Then you have the people that sort of work at the Senate; the more bureaucratic people, the senator's aides, the people who help run the Senate, so they have a very different type of costume as well, nothing quite as grand as the senators, a little bit more like the Star Wars equivalent of an everyday corporate look. Then we had Senate security, so they needed a uniform, and then we also had the journalists and the people from the outside world that have come to report about the things that are happening at the Senate.' Andor isn't the only sci-fi series to feature Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences. The campus has been indelibly embedded within the visual lexicon of modern science fiction, with appearances in such shows as Westworld as the exterior of DELOS headquarters and in the 2017 episode 'Smile' of Doctor Who. It also appeared on the big screen Brad Bird's 2015 sci-fi drama Tomorrowland. When asked why he thinks why the City of Arts and Sciences exerts such a powerful influence on the collective imagination of artists and directors alike, Hull was quick to credit the scope and diversity of Calatrava's vision for the complex's structure. 'It's just so innately science fiction, and there's the scale of it,' Hull said. 'The scale is monumental. It's a very coherent, encapsulated vision. There's a lot to play with. It's not just one building, and it's so rare to find that. For our purposes, I really felt it just embodied some of Star Wars' visual language. I mean, everything Calatrava designs looks like it's from the future, so it's sort of inherently going to attract that sort of type of filmmaking and in order to tell those types of stories.'While writing this piece, I learned that a group of Spanish Star Wars fans met up at the City of Arts and Sciences to celebrate May the Fourth in 2005, mere days before the theatrical premiere of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and nearly 20 years before the campus itself would appear in Andor. Knowing that, it feels like nothing short of an act of the Force to see Calatrava's masterpiece finally make its appearance in a galaxy far, far away.
The Hindu
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Star Wars Day 2025: Ranking the 10 best ‘Star Wars' stories ever told
For a franchise born in a desert under a binary sunset and raised among myth, merchandise, and cultural liturgy, Star Wars has aged into something oddly baroque. Across nearly five decades, it has produced a sprawling mosaic of stories — some sublime, some embarrassing, and some both at once. Sorting through the rubble and relics of that galaxy far, far away is no small task, but if there's a throughline to be found, it lies in the franchise's unshakable belief in the redemptive power of story: that good and evil can be felt in orchestral swells, that the past is worth fighting, and that somewhere in the light of twin suns or the sparks of rebellion, someone is always choosing to be better. Here, then, are the ten finest expressions of that belief — films and series that expanded the myth, sharpened it, and in the best cases, even challenged it. 10. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi For a film tasked with closing the most operatic of space operas, Return of the Jedi wears its destiny with a lightness of heart. It's a strange brew of Ewok showboating and existential redemption, and while its tonal shifts occasionally buckle under the weight of trilogy-ending expectations, the final confrontation between father and son is pure mythological gold. Few films allow a villain in a black mask to die so tenderly. 9. Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi Rian Johnson's provocation-in-sheep-clothing is perhaps the most literary of the Star Wars entries. It is philosophical, bristling with contradiction, and unwilling to kneel before the altar of nostalgia. Here, Luke Skywalker is no longer the familiar Joseph Campbell-ian boy-hero, but a weary monk who milks sea cows and shames legends. The film fractured the fandom, as true revolutions must, but in doing so, it dared to question what happens when myths age, and whether burning them down might be the truest way to preserve them. 8. The Mandalorian What began as a spaghetti western in a galaxy far, far away has evolved into a gentle meditation on fatherhood, loyalty, and the unlikely warmth of a faceless man and a 50-year-old green toddler. The Mandalorian succeeded by polishing the wheels of reinvention with a reverence for genre and an eye for simplicity. Each episode is a love letter to the serialised adventures of yore, shot through with space dogfights, sand-swept vistas, and the occasional Werner Herzog cameo. That it also reintroduced Boba Fett and gave us Grogu is just sweetened blue milk. 7. Star Wars: The Clone Wars Initially dismissed as a babysitter for younglings and the chronically online, The Clone Wars grew — seven seasons deep — into one of the most emotionally intricate and narratively generous pieces of Star Wars storytelling. It gave flesh to the clone troopers, enhanced Anakin's tragedy, and turned Ahsoka Tano into a paradigm. The show embroidered the gaps with consequence, character, and lightsaber choreography that often outshone its cinematic siblings. 6. Star Wars Rebels If Clone Wars was the war epic, Rebels is the poem of resistance that's smaller in scale but richer in heart. Set between the fall of the Republic and the rise of rebellion, the show chronicles the coming-of-age of Ezra Bridger, a scrappy Force-sensitive orphan, and a makeshift family of freedom fighters aboard the Ghost. It takes Star Wars' most sacred texts of the Force, legacy, and sacrifice, and wrestles with them in meaningful ways. By the time it also introduces time travel, it somehow well and truly earns it. 5. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope There is a childlike sincerity in A New Hope that has, with time, become the stuff of legend. It is both artefact and origin story, a cosmic pastiche of Kurosawa and Flash Gordon, spliced together with model glue and instinct. Its world-building is tactile and its stakes, though galactic, are deeply personal. Watching it now is like revisiting the hopeful, clumsy and luminous relics of a distant childhood you never had but somehow remember. 4. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story No Jedi, no Skywalkers — just the desperate logistics of rebellion. Rogue One is a war film smuggled inside a Star Wars shell, in which heroism is earned, not inherited, and hope is something passed hand to hand like contraband. Its ending is a self-destructive masterclass, as [SPOILERS] every major character is extinguished so that a single line of dialogue in A New Hope might blaze with retroactive glory. It is the franchise's most self-contained elegy, and one of its most stirring. 3. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith This is where the mask fits, finally. After two films of cringeworthy galactic soap and awkward courtship, Revenge of the Sith plunges into operatic tragedy, embracing the inherent doom of the prequels. It is Shakespeare by way of volcanic lightsaber confrontations, brimming with heartbreak and political cynicism. Palpatine becomes the devil in bureaucrat's robes, and Anakin finally fulfils his destiny as the cautionary tale writ forged in fire and betrayal. Say what you will about its sometimes wooden (but endlessly meme-able) dialogue — this is the fall of Rome with a John Williams score. 2. Andor In a franchise built on chosen ones, Andor turns its lens to the unchosen, the invisible, the desperate, and the morally ambiguous. Tony Gilroy's radical masterpiece frees itself from the shackles of space operatics and refines itself as a riveting socio-political descent into fascism, and the many forms resistance must take. Through dystopian prison floors that hum with dread, banal ISB boardrooms that chill the blood, and piercing monologues that border on scripture, the show reframes heroism as a daily, often joyless act of defiance. No lightsabers, and certainly no Force. Just ordinary people teetering on the edge of an extraordinary, inextinguishable belief. 1. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back There is a reason this is the Rosetta Stone of sequels. The Empire Strikes Back takes the brash optimism of its predecessor and coats it in frost — literally, on Hoth, and figuratively, through betrayal, failure, and one of the most iconic paternity reveals in cinematic history. It is a film that deepens the myth without resolving it, to split its heroes and leave them suspended in narrative limbo. Irvin Kershner directs with moody gravitas, and suddenly Star Wars becomes an immortal saga. Happy May 4th to all, and May the Force be with you, always.
